The Supreme Court/The Supreme Court.iso/pc/ascii/1992/92_1662/92_1662.zd

Text File | 1994-03-22 | 13.6 KB | 270 lines

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
--------
No. 92-1662
--------
UNITED STATES, PETITIONER v. RALPH STUART
GRANDERSON, Jr.
on writ of certiorari to the united states court
of appeals for the eleventh circuit
[March 22, 1994]

  Chief Justice Rehnquist, with whom Justice
Thomas joins, dissenting.
  The Court today interprets the term -original sen-
tence,- as it appears in 18 U. S. C. 3565(a), to mean
-the maximum sentence, under the relevant Sentencing
Guidelines range, which a defendant could have received,
but did not, when initially sentenced.-  I think this
interpretation ignores the most natural meaning of these
two words, and I therefore dissent.
  Section 3565(a) does not indicate on its face whether
a defendant found in violation of probation must be
sentenced to prison or resentenced to another term of
probation.  I agree with the Court that 3565(a) must
be read to require imposition of a term of imprisonment;
otherwise, as the Court explains, the proviso would be
senseless.  See ante, at 5-6; In re Chapman, 166 U. S.
661, 667 (1897) (-nothing is better settled than that
statutes should receive a sensible construction, such as
will effectuate the legislative intention, and, if possible,
so as to avoid an unjust or an absurd conclusion-).  If
the Court had stopped there, I would have been happy
to join its opinion.  Having correctly resolved one
ambiguity in 3565(a), however, the Court proceeds to
find another, regarding the meaning of the term -origi-
nal sentence,- where none exists.  The Court thus
ultimately concludes, incorrectly in my view, that the
rule of lenity should be applied.
  The Court believes that the Government's reading of
3565(a) is not -unambiguously correct.-  Ante, at 15.
As we have explained, however, the rule of lenity should
not be applied -merely because it [is] possible to articu-
late a construction more narrow than that urged by the
Government.-  Moskal v. United States, 498 U. S. 103,
108 (1990).  Instead we have reserved lenity for those
situations where, after -[a]pplying well-established
principles of statutory construction,- Gozlon-Peretz v.
United States, 498 U. S. 395, 410 (1991), there still
remains -a grievous ambiguity or uncertainty in the
language and structure of the Act,-  Chapman v. United
States, 500 U. S. 453, 463 (1991) (internal quotation
marks and citation omitted).
  The term -original sentence- is not defined in the
statute.  A basic principle of statutory construction
provides that where words in a statute are not defined,
they -must be given their ordinary meaning.-  Id., at
462; see also Smith v. United States, 507 U. S. ___, ___
(1993) (-When a word is not defined by statute, we
normally construe it in accord with its ordinary or
natural meaning-).
  Whether one consults a dictionary or common sense,
the meaning of -original sentence- is plain: The term
refers to the initial judgment imposing punishment on
a defendant.  -Original- is commonly understood to
mean -initial- or -first in order.-  See Webster's Third
New International Dictionary 1592 (1971) (Webster's)
(defining -original- as -of or relating to a rise or begin-
ning . . . initial, primary-); Black's Law Dictionary 1099
(6th ed. 1990) (defining original as -[p]rimitive- or -first
in order-).  -Sentence,- in turn, is ordinarily meant in
the context of criminal law to refer to the judgment or
order -by which a court or judge imposes punishment or
penalty upon a person found guilty.-  Webster's 2068;
see also Black's Law Dictionary, supra, at 1362 (defining
-sentence- as -[t]he judgment . . . imposing the punish-
ment to be inflicted, usually in the form of a fine,
incarceration, or probation-).  In the context of
3565(a), the term -original sentence- thus must refer
to the sentence of probation a defendant actually
received when initially sentenced.  It cannot, therefore,
mean what the Court says it means:  the maximum
sentence which a defendant could have received, but did
not.
  The Court's interpretation thus founders, I believe,
because the word -sentence- does not ordinarily, or even
occasionally, refer to a range of available punishment.
Nor does the modifying word -original- support the
Court's interpretation, because -original- is nowhere
defined as -potential- or -available,- nor can it be so
construed.  Yet under the Court's interpretation of the
term -original sentence,- if we know that -sentence-
itself does not mean an available range of punishment,
then -original- must be twisted to mean what we know
it cannot-i.e., -potential- or -available.-
  This Court has on many occasions demonstrated its
clear understanding of the term -original sentence.-
See, e.g., Hicks v. Feiock, 485 U. S. 624, 639, and n. 11
(1988) (using term -original sentence- to refer to sen-
tence of imprisonment initially imposed and suspended);
Tuten v. United States, 460 U. S. 660, 666-667, and
n. 11 (1983) (using term -original sentence- to refer to
period of probation imposed by sentencing court when
youthful defendant was initially sentenced); United
States v. DiFrancesco, 449 U. S. 117, 135 (1980), and id.,
at 148 (Brennan, J., dissenting) (both using term
-original sentence- to refer to sentence imposed upon
defendant at conclusion of first trial); North Carolina v.
Pearce, 395 U. S. 711, 713, and n. 1 (1969), and id., at
743 (Black, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part)
(same); Pennsylvania ex rel. Sullivan v. Ashe, 302 U. S.
51, 53 (1937) (same).  As these and numerous other
opinions show, we have until today invariably used
-original sentence- just as one would expect: to refer to
the punishment imposed upon a defendant when he was
first sentenced, and to distinguish that initial sentence
from a sentence the defendant received after some
intervening event-such as a new trial, see Pearce,
supra, or a revocation of probation, see Hicks, supra.
  The Court's heretofore firm grasp on the meaning of
-original sentence- should not be cause for wonder or
surprise.  Whether alone or in combination, the defini-
tions of -original- and -sentence- simply do not seem
open to serious debate.  Once the term -original sen-
tence- is accorded its ordinary meaning, the operation of
3565(a) becomes perfectly clear.  It follows, from
another elementary canon of construction, that the plain
language of 3565(a) should control.  See Moskal, 498
U. S., at 108.  As we stated in Consumer Product Safety
Comm'n v. GTE Sylvania, Inc., 447 U. S. 102, 108
(1980), -[a]bsent a clearly expressed legislative intention
to the contrary, [the statutory] language must ordinarily
be regarded as conclusive.-
  The Court offers several reasons for rejecting the most
natural reading of 3565(a).  None of them persuades.
The Court begins by suggesting that if Congress meant
for the sentence of probation to be used to calculate the
length of incarceration, it could have stated so more
clearly.  See ante, at 6.  Although perhaps true, Con-
gress could have just as easily, if it wished, stated in
clear terms that the sentence of incarceration should be
calculated based on the maximum available sentence
under the Guidelines range.  Indeed, as I have already
noted, ante, at 3-4, n. 3, Congress stated something very
similar in the subsections preceding and following the
one at issue, where it provided that upon revocation of
probation, a court can or must impose any sentence that
was -available- when the defendant was initially
sentenced.  See 3565(a)(2) and (b); United States v.
Sosa, 997 F. 2d 1130, 1133 (CA5 1993); United States v.
Byrkett, 961 F. 2d 1399, 1400-1401 (CA8 1992) (-If
Congress, in referring to the `original sentence,' meant
the Guidelines range applicable at the time of the initial
sentencing, it would have simply said, `any other
sentence that was available . . . at the time of the
initial sentencing,' as it did- in 3565(a)(2) and (b)).
  The Court also asserts that its reading of the term
avoids according two different meanings to the word
-sentence.-  Yet under the Court's own interpretation,
the word -sentence- when used as a verb refers to the
imposition of a fixed period of incarceration; but when
the word -sentence- next appears, as a noun, the Court
concludes that it refers to a range of available punish-
ment.  Thus it is the Court's reading of the statute that
fails -`to give . . .  a similar construction'- to a word
used as both a noun and a verb in a single statutory
sentence.  See ante, at 7 (quoting Reves, 507 U. S., at
___).  Under what I think is the correct reading of the
statute, all that changes is what the defendant will be
(or was) sentenced to-prison or probation; the word
-sentence- itself does not change meanings.
  The Court next contends that -`[p]robation and impris-
onment are not fungible,'- ante, at 7 (citation omitted),
and that its interpretation of the statute avoids the
-shoal" supposedly encountered when explaining -how
multiplying a sentence of probation by one-third can
yield a sentence of imprisonment,- ante, at 8.  Probation
and imprisonment, however, need not be fungible for
this statute to make sense.  They need only both be
subsumed under the term -sentence,- which, for the
reasons previously stated, they are.  See Black's Law
Dictionary 1362 (6th ed. 1990) (defining sentence as a
judgment imposing punishment, which may include -a
fine, incarceration, or probation-).  While tying the
length of imprisonment to the length of the original
sentence of probation might seem harsh to the Court,
surely it is not an irrational method of calculation.
Indeed, the Court does not question that Congress could
have tied the length of imprisonment to the length of
the original sentence of probation.
  Congress in fact prescribed a similar method of
calculation in a parallel provision of the Anti-Drug
Abuse Act, 18 U. S. C. 3583(g), which was added at
the same time as 3565(a) and which also sets out the
punishment for defendants found in possession of a
controlled substance.  Section 3583(g) explicitly provides:
-If the defendant is found by the court to be in the
possession of a controlled substance, the court shall
terminate the term of supervised release and require the
defendant to serve in prison not less than one-third of
the term of supervised release.-  Considering that
3565(a) and 3583(g) were enacted at the same time
and are directed at precisely the same problem, it seems
quite reasonable to construe them in pari materia to call
for parallel treatment of drug offenders under non-
custodial supervision.  Whatever the differences between
supervised release and probation, surely supervised
release is more like probation than it is like imprison-
ment.  That Congress explicitly chose in 3583(g) to tie
the length of imprisonment to the length of supervised
release suggests quite strongly that Congress meant in
3565(a) to use length of the original sentence of
probation as the basis for calculation.  At the very least,
the method of calculation prescribed in 3583(g) removes
the imaginary -shoal" which blocks the Court's way to a
sensible construction of 3565(a).
    The Court refuses to read these provisions in pari
materia because a sentence of probation is normally-but
not necessarily-longer than a period of supervised
release.  See ante, at 11-12, and n. 8.  Simply because
the end result of the calculation might be different in
some cases, however, is not a persuasive reason for
refusing to recognize the obvious similarity in the
methods of calculation.  Nor is it irrational for Congress
to have decided that, in general, those defendants who
have already been incarcerated should return to prison
for a shorter time than those who have served no time
in prison.
  Here, as in other portions of its opinion, the Court
expresses concern with the apparent harshness of the
result if -original sentence- is interpreted to mean the
sentence of probation initially imposed on a defendant.
In some cases the result may indeed appear harsh.  Yet
harsh punishment, in itself, is neither a legitimate
ground for invalidating a statute nor cause for injecting
ambiguity into a statute that is susceptible to principled
statutory construction.  See Callanan v. United States,
364 U. S. 587, 596 (1961) (-The rule [of lenity] comes
into operation at the end of the process of construing
what Congress has expressed, not at the beginning as an
overriding consideration of being lenient to wrongdoers-).
A straightforward reading of 3565(a) may in some
cases call for imposition of severe punishment, but it
does not produce -a result so absurd or glaringly unjust,
as to raise a reasonable doubt about Congress' intent.-
Chapman, 500 U. S., at 463-464 (internal quotation
marks and citations omitted).
  The Court's interpretation of 3565(a), finally, creates
an incurable uncertainty: It offers no sound basis for
choosing which point in the Guidelines range should
serve as the basis for calculating a revocation sentence.
After describing the four possible reference points within
the range, the Court selects the maximum available
sentence.  It rejects selecting a point in the middle of
the available range, because to do so -would be purely
arbitrary.-  Ante, at 16.  Yet the Court does not explain
why choosing the top end of the range is any less
arbitrary, or any more -sensible," than picking a point
in the middle of the range.  Indeed, the Court's selection
smacks of awarding a consolation prize to the Govern-
ment simply out of concern that the Government was
mistakenly done out of victory in the main event.  And
choosing the maximum possible sentence under the
Guidelines hardly seems consistent with the rule of
lenity which the Court purports to apply.

  A straightforward reading of 3565(a) creates no
similar uncertainty.  Because I think the language of
3565(a) is clear, I would apply it.  Accordingly, I would
reverse the Court of Appeals.