Petitioner’s Brief in Burgess v. United States

By Kevin Russell
on Jan 23, 2008 at 10:07 am

We filed this brief on behalf of the petitioner in Burgess v. United States, No. 06-11429, on Tuesday.  The case presents the question whether the 20-year mandatory minimum sentence imposed under 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A) – which applies to individuals convicted of certain federal drug offenses who have a prior “felony drug offense” conviction – applies to a defendant who was previously convicted of a state drug offense classified by the state as a misdemeanor by punishable by more than a year’s imprisonment.   The brief was prepared with the assistance of three students from our Winter Term Supreme Court Litigation class at Harvard: Nicholas Barnaby, Catherine McCaw, and Elyse Schneiderman.