For Those Of Us Who Practice Criminal Law In Federal Courts, Read This SCOTUS Opinion Below.

The case is DILLON v. UNITED STATES, No. 09–6338.

Read the court's synopsis below:

In 1993, petitioner Dillon was convicted of, inter alia, crack and powder cocaine offenses, which produced a base offense level of 38 and a Reductions Guidelines range of 262-to-327 months’ imprisonment. The court sentenced him at the bottom of the range for those counts. After the Sentencing Commission amended the Guidelines to reduce the base offense level associated with each quantity of crack cocaine, USSGSupp. App. C, Amdt. 706, and made that amendment retroactive, USSG Supp. App. C, Amdt. 713, Dillon moved for a sentence reduc-tion under 18 U. S. C. §3582(c)(2). That provision authorizes a district court to reduce an otherwise final sentence pursuant to a Guidelines amendment if a reduction is consistent with the Commis-sion’s policy statements. The relevant policy statement, USSG§1B1.10, precludes a court from reducing a sentence “to a term that is less than the minimum of the amended guidelines range” except inlimited circumstances. In addition to the two-level reduction author-ized by the amendment, Dillon sought a variance below the amendedGuidelines range, contending that United States v. Booker, 543 U. S. 220, authorized the exercise of such discretion. The District Court imposed a sentence at the bottom of the revised range but declined togrant a further reduction. Finding Booker inapplicable to §3582(c)(2)proceedings, the court concluded that the Commission’s directives in§1B1.10 constrained it to impose a sentence within the amendedGuidelines range. The Third Circuit affirmed.
Held: Booker’s holdings do not apply to §3582(c)(2) proceedings and therefore do not require treating §1B1.10(b) as advisory. Pp. 6–14.
(a) The statute’s text and narrow scope belie Dillon’s characteriza-tion of proceedings under §3582(c)(2) as “resentencing” proceedings governed by the same principles as other sentencing proceedings. In-
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stead, §3582(c)(2) authorizes only a limited adjustment to an other-wise final sentence. This conclusion is further supported by the sub-stantial role Congress gave the Commission with respect to sentence-modification proceedings, charging it with determining whether andto what extent a Guidelines amendment will be retroactive, 28
U. S. C. §994(u), and authorizing a court to grant a reduction under§3582(c)(2) only “if [it] is consistent with applicable policy statementsissued by the Sentencing Commission.” Section 3582(c)(2) estab-lishes a two-step inquiry: A court must (1) determine the scope of thereduction, if any, authorized by §1B1.10, and then (2) consider whether the authorized reduction is warranted according to the ap-plicable §3553(a) factors. At step one, the court must follow the Commission’s instructions in §1B1.10 to impose a term of imprison-ment within the amended Guidelines range unless the sentencing court originally imposed a below-Guidelines sentence. §1B1.10(b)(2).Because reference to §3553(a) is appropriate only at step two, thatprovision does not transform §3582(c)(2) proceedings into plenary re-sentencing proceedings. Pp. 6–10.
(b)
Given §3582(c)(2)’s limited scope and purpose, proceedings un-der that section do not implicate Booker. The section represents acongressional act of lenity intended to give prisoners the benefit oflater enacted adjustments to the judgments reflected in the Guide-lines. Taking the original sentence as given, any facts found by a judge at a §3582(c)(2) proceeding do not serve to increase the pre-scribed range of punishment; instead, they affect only the judge’s ex-ercise of discretion within that range. That exercise does not contra-vene the Sixth Amendment, even if it is informed by judge-found facts. Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U. S. 466, 481. Thus, Dillon’s Sixth Amendment rights were not violated by the District Court’s adherence to §1B1.10’s instruction to consider a reduction only within the amended Guidelines range. Dillon’s argument that Booker’s re-medial opinion nonetheless requires the Guidelines to be treated asadvisory in such proceedings is unpersuasive given that proceedings under §3582(c)(2) are readily distinguishable from other sentencingproceedings. Pp. 10–13.
(c)
Also rejected is Dillon’s argument that the District Court should have corrected other mistakes in his original sentence, namely, a Booker error resulting from the initial sentencing court’s treatment of the Guidelines as mandatory and an alleged error in the calculationof his criminal-history category. Because those aspects of Dillon’ssentence were not affected by the crack-cocaine Guidelines amend-ment, they are outside the scope of the §3582(c)(2) proceeding, andthe District Court properly declined to address them. Pp. 13–14.
572 F. 3d 146, affirmed.
Cite as: 560 U. S. ____ (2010) 3
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SOTOMAYOR, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS,
C. J., and SCALIA, KENNEDY, THOMAS, GINSBURG, and BREYER, JJ., joined. STEVENS, J., filed a dissenting opinion. ALITO, J., took no part in the decision of the case.