6. Fair Sentencing
In 2008, Carlos Concepcion pleaded guilty to charges of crack cocaine possession and was sentenced to 19 years in prison the following year. However, just two years into his sentence, then-president Barrack Obama signed The Fair Sentencing Act into federal law on August 3, 2010. This act reduced sentencing penalties for federal crimes involving crack cocaine.
However, it wasn’t until 2018 when Congress passed the First Step Act that Concepcion could appeal for a reduced sentence as this act made the FSA changes retroactive. When Concepcion appealed for resentencing in 2019, his motion was denied by a district court. The Supreme Court has to decide whether a federal court has to consider new facts and the 2018 reform law that sought to reduce racial disparities for cocaine offenses.
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