Pro Bono Client Obtains Sentence Correction

Judge N. Carlton Tilley, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina granted a motion to reduce the sentence of a Paul, Weiss client who is currently serving a prison term arising from a drug conviction. The judge reduced our client's sentence by 58 months, and our client, who was scheduled to be released in 2024, will now be released in 2019.

In 2007, our client was convicted at trial of conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine and maintaining a drug-involved premises and was sentenced to 284 months' imprisonment on the conspiracy count to run concurrent with 240 months for maintaining the drug-involved premises. The court later reduced the sentence on the conspiracy count to 182 months based on an amendment to the sentencing guidelines, but left in place the 240-month sentence on the other count. Paul, Weiss came to represent the client as part of the Clemency Project 2014. As a precursor to filing a clemency petition, we filed a motion to reduce our client's sentence to 182 months on the second count, arguing that the amendment to the sentencing guidelines reducing the advisory guideline range also applied to that count. 

The Paul, Weiss team included litigation associate Alex Hyman, with litigation partner Dave Brown and counsel Karen King supervising the matter.