United States v. Clarence Bonds

OPINION

JULIA SMITH GIBBONS, Circuit Judge.

In April 2010, Clarence Bonds pled guilty to a drug-conspiracy charge and was sentenced to 120 months’ imprisonment, which represented a significant downward variance from his guideline range of 210 to 262 months. In November 2015, the district court denied Bonds’s motion for a sentence reduction pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2), on the erroneous ground that Bonds had been sentenced to the statutory mandatory minimum, when, in fact, there was no applicable mandatory minimum sentence. On appeal, Bonds argues for the first time that the retroactive…