enhanced mandatory minimum sentence

Issues

In 2002, a South Carolina state court convicted Keith Burgess of misdemeanor drug possession, an offense punishable by up to two years' incarceration. In 2003, a federal court convicted Burgess of conspiring to distribute fifty or more grams of cocaine base in violation of the Controlled Substances Act ("CSA"). The court ruled that Burgess' prior state-court conviction constituted a "felony drug offense" under the CSA and thus qualified Burgess for sentence enhancement from ten to twenty years' imprisonment.� Burgess appealed, claiming that the sentence enhancement provision did not apply.� Burgess argued that court should have applied the CSA's definition of "felony" instead of "felony drug offense," under which the state-court conviction merely constituted a misdemeanor. This case highlights the role of judicial review in the application of mandatory minimum sentences.

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