United States v. Raymond Surratt, Jr.

Thomas Jefferson wrote that “the most sacred of the duties of a government is to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.” Those words impart that all citizens, no matter their plight in life, should be accorded justice in our court system. Today’s perfunctory dismissal of Petitioner Raymond Surratt, Jr.’s 10-year effort to obtain a fair and impartial disposition of his case in the federal courts is, if not an outright injustice, at least an abandonment of fairness.

It began when we incorrectly construed 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1), the statute pursuant to which Petitioner was sentenced,…