In this Holder FSA memo 7 15 11, U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., announced today that the United States has now concluded that the revised crack cocaine mandatory minimums in the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 apply to all sentencings on or after the date of the FSA's enactment, i.e., August 3, 2010. In light of the Act's policy in favor of restoring fairness in cocaine sentencings, the memo instructs prosecutors to implement this change immediately.
Holder sticks with his position that the reduced mandatory minimums in the FSA do not apply to any person who was sentenced before August 3, 2010 for a crack cocaine offense.
Still, this is big news as the United States had previously argued that the law only applied to those whose crack cocaine offenses occurred after the law passed, and courts have split on whether the FSA applies retroactively to those sentenced after the law passed for offenses that occurred before. See generally my 6/30/11 Retroactivity of the FSA of 2010 post.