In the 1990s, Maurice Jerome McDonald was considered a major drug trafficker in Little Rock, as reflected by the steep sentence imposed on him in 1999 -- three life terms plus 20 years.
Now, because of changes in federal laws aimed at reducing "over-incarceration," his sentences have been reduced to the point that, at age 45, he has served more than half his time and could go free before the age of 60.
Two of his life sentences were reduced in 2000 -- one to 20 years and one to five years -- based on an appellate court's findings about the quantity and type of drugs linked to him during his trial. But until late last month, the man who was convicted at age 28 still had a life sentence. Without the possibility of parole, he was still facing a lifetime behind bars.
That changed on April 29, when in response to a motion filed nearly a year ago by attorney Chris Tarver of the federal public defender's office, U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright agreed to convert McDonald's remaining life sentence to a 30-year term. Tarver's motion, like many filed across the country in the past couple of years, cited a national directive aimed at reducing prison time for federal drug offenders nationwide.
The change came about when the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which sets federal sentencing guidelines, voted in April 2014 to reduce guideline levels for must drug-trafficking crimes by two levels, beginning Nov. 1, 2014. The commission later voted to approve the changes retroactively.
The guidelines use a "grid" approach to suggest uniform sentencing ranges for federal crimes in all courtrooms across the country. They take into account the quantity of drugs involved in a case and the offender's criminal history to come up with a score that carries a suggested penalty range for judges to consider. Under Amendment 782 to the guidelines, also known as the "Drugs Minus Two" amendment, the drug quantity table was downwardly adjusted by two levels.
When the edict first took effect, it was expected to reduce sentences for up to 46,000 people nationwide who were serving time for federal drug crimes, including 232 people convicted in the Eastern District of Arkansas. A little more than half of that number have seen reductions so far.
While most reductions in Arkansas' Eastern District were requested automatically, because of the work of a team of deputy clerks and probation officers who reviewed the files of more than 1,000 people, some cases, like McDonald's, were more involved and required defense attorneys or defendants to file motions independently.
In McDonald's case, when the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals threw out two of his three life sentences in 2000 and ordered him to serve all his sentences concurrently instead of consecutively, it also cut in half his 20-year sentence for a related conviction of being a felon in possession of a firearm. But even with the break granted by the 8th Circuit, McDonald still had little hope of ever walking free.
Tarver's motion noted that the Amendment 782 changes reduced McDonald's total offense level on the guideline grid from 43 to 41. Level 43 requires a life sentence, while Level 41 carries a penalty range of between 360 months and life.
To the cheers of several people who attended a hearing on McDonald's request he be resentenced at the low end of the range, Wright agreed to a 360-month, or 30-year, sentence.
That leaves McDonald with concurrent sentences of 30 years, 20 years, 10 years and five years -- or 30 years altogether.
In the Sentencing Commission's latest Retroactivity Data Report, it notes as of March 25, shortly before McDonald's motion was decided, 225 of the 233 automatic petitions for reductions filed in the Eastern District of Arkansas had been granted. The remaining eight had been denied.
In the state's Western District, 206 of 337 petitions, or 61 percent of those filed, had been granted, while 131, or 39 percent, had been denied.
The report shows that the most reductions were in the Southern District of Texas, which had 2,464 petitions filed, with about 54 percent, or 1,339, granted and 1,125 denied. The lowest number was in the Northern Mariana Islands, where all three petitions filed were granted.
Across the country, of 38,242 petitions filed so far, 70 percent, or 26,850, have been granted. The report notes that some cases were excluded from the analysis because the case couldn't be matched with an original case in the commission's records.
The report also shows that among the drug offenders who have received reductions so far because of Amendment 782, most -- 31.3 percent -- were serving time for methamphetamine offenses.
About 28 percent were serving time for powder-cocaine offenses, 20 percent had crack-cocaine convictions, nearly 9 percent had marijuana convictions and 7 percent had heroin convictions. The remaining 4.5 percent are listed in the "other" category, which includes convictions for PCP, Ecstasy, steroids, prescription painkillers and synthetic drugs.
A chart in the report shows that of 26,352 of the granted petitions, 52.7 percent of the offenders are white, 28.5 percent are black, 8.8 percent are Hispanic and 10 percent are classified as "other." The chart also indicates that 88.5 percent of the defendants are male, while 11.5 percent are female. The average age of all the offenders is 35. The findings about race, sex and age excluded 498 cases because of incomplete information.
In the Eastern District of Arkansas, offenders have seen an average 17 percent reduction of their sentences, reflecting the national average, according to the national report.
The chart shows that 58.7 percent of offenders who were denied reductions across the country were denied because other factors controlled their sentences that made them ineligible for reductions, such as having career-offender status or being restricted by a mandatory minimum sentence.
NW News on 05/30/2016