Statement of Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte Markup of H.R. 3713, the “Sentencing Reform Act of 2015”

Chairman Goodlatte: The legislation the Committee will consider today is the culmination of three years of work on over-criminalization and criminal justice reform. In the 113th Congress, I along with Ranking Member Conyers, established an Over-Criminalization Task Force, which held nine hearings on a variety of topics including over-criminalization, over federalization, sentencing reform, prison reform, and regulatory crime. Building upon the work of the Task Force, the Ranking Member and I launched a Criminal Justice Reform Initiative in June of this year. The first step in this Initiative was a listening session at which any Member of Congress was invited to address the Committee on criminal justice reforms. Following the listening session, Committee staff worked together in a bipartisan fashion to craft legislation that meets the goals of this initiative. The first bill we will consider today is H.R. 3713, the “Sentencing Reform Act of 2015.”  I introduced this legislation, along with Ranking Member Conyers, Crime Subcommittee Ranking Member Jackson-Lee, Representative Labrador, Representative Chu, and Representative Bishop and a bipartisan group of leaders on this issue.  This legislation strikes an important balance between reducing certain federal mandatory sentencing laws and ensuring that these sentencing laws continue to protect the American people from violent criminals. H.R. 3713 makes several significant changes to federal sentencing law.  It reduces the mandatory life sentence for a third drug trafficking offense to a mandatory sentence of 25 years, and reduces the second-strike mandatory sentence from 20 to 15 years.  H.R. 3713, in response to a recent court decision, amends federal firearms statutes to clarify Congressional intent that ”stacking” of federal penalties requires an intervening arrest and conviction. It broadens the application of the existing “safety valve,” to apply the benefit of sentencing without regard to the mandatory minimum to offenders with prior misdemeanor convictions.  The bill also creates a second, narrowly-tailored safety valve for certain offenders facing the 10-year mandatory minimum sentence.  Finally, the bill provides for limited retroactivity of the crack cocaine trafficking quantities in the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010. H.R. 3713 also makes the sentencing reductions proposed in the bill retroactive.  However, it does not blindly apply retroactivity.  The bill excludes from retroactivity any offender who has a prior conviction for a serious violent felony, for which the offender served 13 months or more in prison.  This means that those inmates will be required to serve their full term of incarceration, and will not be released early.  I believe this is a critically important feature of H.R. 3713. H.R. 3713 contains a sentencing enhancement for fentanyl.  Our nation is currently in the midst of a heroin epidemic.  Fentanyl, a narcotic pain medication 80 to 100 times more potent than morphine, is often used as a cutting agent for heroin, or is sold disguised as heroin, and has led to a rash of deaths across the country.  H.R. 3713 imposes a sentencing enhancement of up to 5 years for trafficking in heroin “cut” with fentanyl, or trafficking in fentanyl represented as heroin.  This enhancement must run consecutively to the underlying sentence. H.R. 3713 allows serious violent felony convictions to serve as the basis for a sentencing enhancement for federal drug trafficking.  Current law only allows prior drug felony convictions to serve as the basis for a sentencing enhancement.  As with the limitation on retroactivity, I believe this is an important change, which will enable law enforcement to target the violent drug traffickers who threaten our communities. The Sentencing Reform Act proposes targeted, responsible sentencing reforms.  It makes common-sense changes to certain federal drug sentences, while helping law enforcement keep violent offenders behind bars and saving taxpayer dollars.  I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

For more on today’s markup, click here.