Retroactivity has been in the news a lot lately, thanks to the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s ongoing consideration of whether to give already-sentenced defendants the benefit of more favorable crack guidelines. But crack defendants are not the only inmates serving extraordinarily long terms based on recently discarded aspects of federal sentencing law.  Earlier this week, the Seventh Circuit approved retroactivity for another category of such inmates in Narvaez v. United States (No. 09-2919).

The Supreme Court’s recent decisions in Begay and Chambers substantially narrowed the reach of the Armed Career Criminal Act’s fifteen-year mandatory minimum.  (For background, see this post.  Ironically, shortly after Narvaez was decided, the Court issued its opinion in Sykes v. United States, which seemed to back away from Begay.)  Five years before Begay, Luis Narvaez pled guilty to bank robbery and was sentenced as a career offender under the sentencing guidelines based on his prior convictions for “violent felonies,” including two convictions for failure to return to confinement in violation of Wis. Stat. § 946.42 (3)(a).  Later, in Chambers, the Supreme Court ruled that the Illinois crime of failing to report for confinement did not count as a “violent felony.”  Narvaez then filed a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 to vacate his sentence in light of Chambers.  The district judge held that Chambers did not apply retroactively, but granted Narvaez a certificate of appealability.