WASHINGTON (CN) — The Supreme Court on Friday ruled that an Iowa man cannot skirt a mandatory minimum sentence for a 2020 drug sale, in a decision that centered on a single conjunction.
Mark Pulsifer challenged his decade-long prison sentence at the high court, arguing he qualified for safety valve provision of the First Step Act, a Trump-era bipartisan criminal reform bill that excluded nonviolent drug offenders from mandatory minimum sentences using a point value system.
To qualify, defendants must not have more than four criminal history points, a prior three-point offense and a prior two-point offense.
Writing for the majority, Justice Elena Kagan agreed with the government's application of the 2018 First Step Act.
"A defendant is eligible for safety-valve relief only if he satisfies each of the paragraph’s three conditions," wrote Kagan, an Obama appointee. "He cannot have more than four criminal history points. He cannot have a prior three-point offense. And he cannot have a prior two-point violent offense. Because Pulsifer has two prior three-point offenses totaling six points, he is not eligible."
Justices Neil Gorsuch, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, said the seemingly minor differences between the arguments is anything but. He said the government’s view, adopted by the court, denies thousands of people a chance at an individualized sentence.
“For them, the First Step Act offers no hope,” Gorsuch wrote.
The problem came in interpreting the word “and.”
Pulsifer was involved in two different drug sales to a confidential informant, leading a grand jury to indict him on two counts. The government sought to strap Pulsifer with an enhanced sentence because of a prior substance possession conviction.
In a plea deal, Pulsifer admitted to one count of distributing methamphetamine and the government dismissed the second — but his prior conviction still left him with a statutory minimum 15-year sentence.
Pulsifer argued this was an error since he qualified for safety-valve relief. He told the Supreme Court that the provision’s use of “and” meant all three qualifiers were necessary to enforce the minimum; Pulsifer qualifies for two out of the three criteria.
A lower court disagreed with Pulsifer’s reading, finding that the First Step Act was written “in the conjunctive.” The ruling was affirmed on appeal.
During oral arguments in October, Pulsifer’s attorney Shay Dvoretzky with Skadden Arps urged the justices to reverse those rulings and follow what he viewed as the textualist reading of the statute.
The government favored what it called a distributive interpretation, viewing “and” to convey “or.” This would mean that, in order to meet the safety valve requirements, criminal defendants could not have any of the qualifying offenses.
Kagan said the paragraph in dispute laid out an eligibility checklist, demanding a defendant satisfy each one of its conditions. While there are two grammatically permissible ways to read the provision, the judge wrote, the correct answer was determined by context, not grammar.
“The content of subparagraphs A, B, and C, especially as read against the guidelines, thus answers the statutory puzzle here — reducing two grammatical possibilities to just one plausible construction,” Kagan wrote.
The majority said the provision would not make sense under Pulsifer’s reading: Congress intended each of the requirements to have an effect, and that is not possible under Pulsifer’s argument.
“In addressing eligibility for sentencing relief, Congress specified three particular features of a defendant’s criminal history — A, B, and C,” Kagan wrote. “It would not have done so if A had no possible effect. It would then have enacted: B and C. But while that is the paragraph Pulsifer’s reading produces, it is not the paragraph Congress wrote.”
Kagan reasoned that while Congress intended to make safety valve relief more widely available, it did not want to get rid of mandatory minimums altogether.
“So here, Congress did not eliminate but only curtailed mandatory minimums — did not extend safety-valve relief to all defendants, but only to some,” Kagan wrote.
Gorsuch said the majority elevated the government’s theory about the First Step Act over the law’s ordinary and natural meaning. He said this approach abandoned one principle of statutory interpretation after another and that courts are not supposed to read words into the law to manufacture a problem that doesn’t exist.
“Today, the court indulges each of these moves,” Gorsuch wrote. “All to what end? To deny some individuals a chance — just a chance — at relief from mandatory minimums and a sentence that fits them and their circumstances. It is a chance Congress promised in the First Step Act, and it is a promise this court should have honored.”
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