Supreme Court won't extend reduced charges to low-level drug offenders

[dalton99a]

4. Nobody in Congress could have foreseen this?

The case was brought by a Florida man, Tarahrick Terry, who was sentenced to 15-and-a-half years in prison for possessing 3.9 grams of crack cocaine — about the same weight as four paper clips. His sentence under the old law was the same as what someone would have received for possessing nearly a pound of powder cocaine.

Terry sought to have his sentence reduced under the First Step Act, but the lower courts said the law's retroactivity provision applied only to two other categories of sentences for larger amounts of the drug, not to low-level offenses.