UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 09-4808
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff – Appellee,
v.
QUINTON MICHAEL SPINKS,
Defendant – Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle
District of North Carolina, at Greensboro. Thomas D. Schroeder,
District Judge. (1:08-cr-00350-TDS-2)
Submitted: March 23, 2010 Decided: April 8, 2010
Before MOTZ, KING, and DAVIS, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Michael Driver, Durham, North Carolina, for Appellant. Anna
Mills Wagoner, United States Attorney, Terry M. Meinecke,
Assistant United States Attorney, Greensboro, North Carolina,
for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Quinton Michael Spinks pled guilty to one count of
conspiracy to distribute five grams or more of cocaine
hydrochloride and fifty grams or more of cocaine base, in
violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846 (2006), and was sentenced to
168 months in prison. On appeal, Spinks argues that the
district court erred in using the applicable statutory mandatory
minimum of 240 months as the starting point for determining
Spinks’s sentence reduction for providing substantial
assistance. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.
Spinks asserts that the district court improperly
relied on both United States v. Pillow, 191 F.3d 403 (4th Cir.
1999), and United States v. Hood, 556 F.3d 226 (4th Cir. 2009),
to determine his starting sentence. According to Spinks, the
decisions in those cases reflect this court’s alleged continued
treatment of “the guidelines, or at least [USSG] § 5G1.1(b)(2),
as mandatory, in direct contradiction to the holdings” in
Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296 (2004), and United States v.
Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005). Spinks argues that the district
court applied § 5G1.1(b) in a mandatory fashion, because the
court explained it would start with “the guideline sentence in
this case, which is the mandatory minimum, and [the court] can
depart under 5K1.1 to whatever degree the [c]ourt determines is
appropriate.” According to Spinks, “[o]nce the government moved
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for reduction of sentence . . ., the [district] [c]ourt was no
longer obligated to sentence Defendant to the statutory minimum
sentence of 240 months.”
To the extent that Spinks challenges this court’s
holding in Hood, it is well-settled that a panel of this court
cannot “overrule the decision of another panel; only the en banc
court may overrule a prior panel decision.” Jones v. Angelone,
94 F.3d 900, 905 (4th Cir. 1996). Moreover, Spinks’s argument
is contrary to the holding in Booker. In Booker, the Supreme
Court struck the provision in the federal sentencing guidelines
that made the guidelines mandatory. 543 U.S. at 249-50.
Nonetheless, the excision of that provision and Booker’s
remedial holding that the guidelines must be applied in a
discretionary manner did not alter the applicability of
statutory mandatory minimums. As this court explained in Hood,
in a post-Booker case, where a statutory mandatory minimum is
applicable to a defendant, “the district court [is] not
authorized to reduce [the] statutory minimum sentence.”
556 F.3d at 233. “Only Congress could authorize a departure
from the statutorily mandated minimum sentence, and it did so in
[18 U.S.C.] § 3553(e) for the limited purpose stated there – ‘to
reflect a defendant’s substantial assistance in the
investigation or prosecution of another person who has committed
an offense.’” Id. (quoting 18 U.S.C. § 3553(e) (2006)).
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Here, Spinks does not argue, nor does the record
reflect, that the statutory mandatory minimum in 21 U.S.C.
§ 841(b)(1)(A) (2006) is inapplicable to his conduct. The
Government filed an Information regarding Spinks’s prior felony
conviction, which made the twenty-year statutory mandatory
minimum applicable to Spinks’s underlying conviction.
Accordingly, because the guidelines range as initially
calculated by the presentence report was less than the statutory
mandatory minimum, the district court did not err in relying on
the twenty-year statutory mandatory minimum as the starting
point for calculating Spinks’s USSG § 5K1.1 departure and
resulting sentence. Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s
conviction and sentence. We dispense with oral argument because
the facts and legal contentions are adequately presented in the
materials before the court and argument would not aid the
decisional process.
AFFIRMED
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