00-3830 Cafi v. United States Parole Commission

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“While the statutes could possibly be read differently, we conclude that the Commission’s reading of Section 4106A and the Guidelines is a permissible construction. First, Section 4106A provides that the Commission is to deter mine a release date and terms and conditions of supervised release ‘as though the defendant were sentenced in a district court;’ it does not provide that a defendant is actually sentenced under the federal statutory and guideline provisions.

Molano-Garza, 965 F.2d at 25. Second, the Commission’s view that it is not bound by the statutory and guideline mandatory minimums when making a Section 4106A determination is eminently reasonable when considered in light of those provisions. For instance, if the Commission were bound by the statutory and guideline mandatory minimums, under 21 U.S.C. sec. 841(a)(1) and (b)(1)(A), Cafi would be required to serve a mandatory minimum term of imprisonment of ten years and a mandatory minimum term of supervised release of five years. But to comply with the mandatory minimums set forth in Section 841(a)(1) would require the Commission to violate Section 4106A, because under the latter provision, Cafi’s combined term of imprisonment and supervised release cannot exceed his foreign 10-year sentence. That means that either the mandatory minimum prison term or the mandatory minimum supervised release term must give way. It is perfectly reasonable for the Commission to have decided that it is more important for a transferee to serve a prison sentence first and then, if time remains on his outstanding foreign sentence, require that time to be served on supervised release. This would best serve the congressional goal of seeking equal treatment of similarly situated Treaty and non-Treaty prisoners with respect to the term of incarceration… Because the Commission’s reading of Section 4106A is permissible, we conclude that it did not err in setting Cafi’s term of imprisonment of 108 months first, and then providing that he would serve 36 months of supervised release or ‘until the full term date of [his] foreign sentence’ were served.”

Affirmed.

Appeal from the United States Parole Commission, Manion, J.