The long legacy of drug wars: Eighth Circuit panel affirms LWOP sentence for drug dealer as reasonable
As long-time readers likely realize, I do not blog much these days about how federal circuit courts are conducting reasonableness review of sentences — largely because there are precious few cases in which circuit judges seriously question (or even seriously engage with) the sentencing judgments of district courts. A helpful reader alerted me to a reasonableness review decision from the Eighth Circuit today which provides another example of how disinclined circuit courts are to question even the most extreme prison sentences.
US v. Duke, No. 18-1371 (8th Cir. July 310, 2019) (available here), involves the appeal after a resentencing of a man originally sentenced three decades ago. Back then, arguably at the height of the modern drug war, "Ralph Duke was sentenced in 1990 to a term of life imprisonment plus forty years for committing several serious drug trafficking and firearms offenses." Here is a description of Duke's crimes from this latest opinion:
Duke controlled all phases of a drug trafficking organization in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area from 1984 through June 1989. He purchased cocaine primarily from a Colombian-affiliated source in Houston or from sources in Los Angeles. The cocaine was transported to Minnesota in vehicles owned by Duke and driven by younger members of his drug trafficking organization. Duke then distributed kilograms of cocaine to dealers for resale at the street level in smaller quantities. Duke laundered the proceeds of drug sales by purchasing homes and cars in the names of others. All told, Duke and his organization trafficked over fifty kilograms of cocaine before law enforcement interrupted their operations. When Duke was apprehended in May 1989, officers found two loaded handguns in his bedroom and two assault shotguns and two AR-15 semi-automatic rifles in his residence. The government charged at least twenty-five people as a result of the investigation of Duke’s organization.
In other words, Duke was a big-time drug dealer in the 1980s, though it does not appear that he was actively involved in any violent activities or that his case involved other aggravating factors (though I suppose he might be called a drug kingpin). But back in the 1990s, when the drug war was ranging and the federal sentencing guidelines were mandatory, perhaps it is not surprising that the federal district judge originally imposed an LWOP sentence on Duke.
But fast forward nearly 30 years, and Duke had the chance to benefit from a full resentencing in 2018 due to various legal developments. Circa 2018, the federal sentencing guidelines were now advisory and, according to Duke, a lower sentence was justified in light of his "exceptional institutional conduct over the last 29 years, lack of criminal history, age, medical history, family ties, rehabilitation, remorse, and low risk of recidivism." But the same federal district judge was unmoved and decided to give Duke an LWOP sentence yet again. And the Eighth Circuit panel, in the ruling linked above, decided this LWOP sentence was reasonable.
When Booker was first decided and circuit courts were tasked with reasonableness review based on 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), I had sincerely hoped appellate judges would come to embrace the task of ensuring sentences were "not greater than necessary to comply with the purposes set forth" by Congress. But it became all too clear all too quickly that all too few circuit judges were eager to rigorously review long prison sentences, especially if those sentences fell within calculated guideline ranges. Years later, even with mass incarceration and long sentences for drug offenses subject to considerable criticism, we still see federal judges finding no problem with giving a "death-in-prison" sentence based on drug dealing many decades ago.
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