Sotomayor balks over rejection of sentencing disputes

(CN) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to wade into two criminal cases, prompting dissents from liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor over a lower court’s flawed jury instructions and an unresolved sentencing-related circuit split.

Sotomayor dissented to the high court’s denial of certiorari to Antoine Wiggins and Landon Hank Black, two criminal defendants challenging their sentences for illegal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and second-degree murder, respectively.

Although the Barack Obama appointee wrote in a five-page dissent that she agreed with the decision to reject Black’s appeal, in which he claimed a lower court failed to “grapple” with the “important constitutional questions” raised by the case, Sotomayor nonetheless urged the Tennessee Supreme Court to resolve “constitutional flaws” in the state’s approach to manslaughter jury instructions.

Sotomayor called Tennessee’s approach to the law around manslaughter “untenable.”

Black was sentenced to 25 years in prison for fatally shooting an armed man who accosted him in the parking lot of a sports bar. Prosecutors said Black made a split-second decision to shoot the victim while the defense told jurors Black shot the victim out of fear for his own life.

“To allow the jury to decide between these rival theories of the case, the trial court instructed it on three different of­fenses: first-degree murder (requiring premeditation), sec­ond-degree murder (a voluntary killing without premedita­tion), and voluntary manslaughter (a killing driven by a state of passion caused by adequate provocation),” Sotomayor explained. “Those in­structions would have been unremarkable, except that two peculiar features of Tennessee law caused a significant problem. If the jury followed its instructions, it could never convict Black of voluntary manslaughter.”

To convict a defendant of second-degree murder in Tennessee, the state must show an unlawful and voluntary killing. A manslaughter conviction requires the same showings plus proof that the defendant acted “in a state of passion induced by adequate provocation.”

Sotomayor said the lower court should not have disregarded the Supreme Court’s 1975 decision in Mullaney v. Wilbur , which held that due process requires prosecutors to “prove beyond a reasonable doubt the absence of the heat of passion on sud­den provocation when the issue is properly presented in a homicide case.”

The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals approved the trial court’s jury instructions and the Tennessee Supreme Court denied Black’s application for discretionary review of the decision this past November. The Tennessee appeals court ruled that sequential jury instructions did not prevent the jury from finding Black guilty of voluntary manslaughter.

“Hopefully Justice Sotomayor’s cogent explanation of this problem will spur either the Tennessee Supreme Court or the Tennessee legislature to step in and ensure that defendants are convicted only of the offenses for which they are actually guilty,” said assistant district public defender Jonathan Harwell, who represents Black, when reached for comment Monday.

Sotomayor reserved much of her frustration for a two-page dissent in Wiggins’ case, joined by Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Sotomayor scolded the U.S. Sentencing Commission for its failure to resolve a circuit split over the definition of a “controlled substance.”

Seven circuit courts have held that a “controlled substance” is one regulated by either federal or state law while three circuits have ruled a “controlled substance” refers only to substances controlled under federal law. The application of the term can determine whether certain defendants will qualify as a “career offender” under the federal sentencing guidelines and face higher sentencing ranges.

Arguing that New Jersey state law defines cocaine more broadly than the federal Controlled Substances Act, Wiggins asked the high court to find that his two prior New Jersey convictions for cocaine distribution did not meet the definition of “controlled substance offenses” and that his eight-year enhanced sentence on the firearm offense was therefore incorrect. The Third Circuit denied Wiggins’s challenge to his sentence and conviction in 2024.

Despite securing a quorum enabling it to amend federal sentencing guidelines in 2022, the commission has not taken action on the split and, Sotomayor wrote, does not plan to take up the issue any time soon.

“So long as the split persists, two defendants whose criminal histo­ries include identical drug offenses and who commit the same federal crime will be subject to significantly different sentencing ranges based solely on geography. Yet in our federal system, a defendant’s location should not determine the severity of his punishment,” Sotomayor wrote.

“If the commission does not intend to resolve the split, it should provide an explanation so that this court can decide whether to address the issue and restore uniformity,” she added.

Julie McGrain, an assistant federal public defender representing Wiggins, expressed disappointment at the court’s refusal to address “this deeply entrenched circuit split.”

“Mr. Wiggins, who was sentenced in the District of New Jersey, is a serving a sentence five years longer than he would be if he had been sentenced in New York or any other state in the Second, Fifth, or Ninth Circuits," McGrain said in a statement Monday. “We sincerely hope the Sentencing Commission will heed the call of Justice Sotomayor and Justice Barrett to resolve the circuit split or clarify its position so the Supreme Court can resolve the issue.”

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