March 20, 2013 - Sentence Reduced From 10 Years to 5 Years Based on Fair Sentencing Act of 2010

March 20, 2013, United States District Court Judge Timothy Corrigan conducted the resentencing for Mr. Kent's client T. B., on remand from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.  T. B. was one of the early cases affected by the dispute whether the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 (which reduced crack cocaine minimum mandatory penalties), applied to defendants whose offenses were committed prior to the effective date of the act.  At the original sentencing in early 2011 Judge Corrigan followed what had by then become a wave of precedent that the act did not apply retroactively - even Families Against Minimum Mandatories had concluded the act did not apply retroactively.  However, Mr. Kent preserved a challenge to the act by rejecting a government plea agreement which required a sentencing appeal waiver and had his client plea straight up to all six counts of his indictment, then preserved the legal challenge by both a presentencing memorandum of law and contemporaneous sentencing objections which argued the act did apply retroactively.  Ultimately the United States Supreme Court held that the FSA applied retroactively, at which point the Government conceded errror on T. B.'s appeal which was then pending at the 11th Circuit.  At the resentencing March 20, 2013, Judge Corrigan reduced T. B.'s original ten year minimum mandatory sentence to the new minimum mandatory of five years - i.e., the sentence was cut in half.  T. B. was represented by Mr. Kent at the original plea, sentencing, on appeal and at the resentencing.   Thanks to Judge Corrigan for his exercise of his sentencing discretion in this manner.