In March, Khan, who is representing himself, filed an Emergency Petition for a Writ of Habeas Corpus in which he sought an order from the court requiring “the BOP [Bureau of Prisons] to recalculate his good-conduct credits,” with the application of the retroactive section of the First Step Act.
Khan is slated to be released on July 8th.
Dobbs had asked for Khan’s petition to be denied and listed three cases which were filed this year and in which a Magistrate Judge ruled that the claims were premature in light of the delayed effective date of the amendment.
He had noted that Sub-section 102(b) of First Step Act of 2018 provides that a section of the Act be amended by striking out current language and inserting language that provides for good-conduct credits “of up to 54 days for each year of the prisoner’s sentence imposed by the court.”
Further, Dobbs had said that the Act imposes the following “effective date” for subsection (b) of Section 102: “The amendments made by this subsection shall take effect beginning on the date that the Attorney General completes and releases the risk and needs assessment system…” This amendment, according to the court document, must be completed 210 days after the December 21st 2018 date of the passage of the Act, which will take the date for it to become effective to July 25th, 2019.
Dismissing the above arguments, Khan, in a response filed yesterday and seen by this newspaper, said that the Attorney General’s directive in the Bill to complete a “risk and needs assessment” system is independent of, and separate from, a good-time fix.
It is Khan’s opinion that the directive was meant to be applied solely toward the separate “earned-time” credits, which has nothing to do with the “good-time” fix.
He also said that the cases listed by Dobbs are not precedents because they in fact go against the Eleventh Circuit’s directive to give effect to Congressional intent. According to Khan, Congressional intent in the matter is clear that the two provisions (earned-time vs good-time) were to be two separate considerations, independent of each other.
“Both provisions were only included under the same section 102 of the bill because they had to pigeonhole the new earned-time provision somewhere in the statutes, and now the Respondent is trying to purposefully miscommingle the two provisions as one, based solely on the bill’s set-up without consideration of the intent behind each provision,” Khan said.
On October 16th, 2009, Khan was sentenced by Judge Dora Irizarry to two 15-year and one ten-year prison terms, all of which were ordered to run concurrently. The sentencing had brought an end to Khan’s trial, which had riveted the country as explosive information linking the then Guyana government to the once powerful and violent drug lord was revealed. Khan’s now convicted lawyer’s trial had been similarly revealing. Among others, the revelations linked former Health Minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy to Khan and implicated him as being the government official authorising the importation of spy equipment to Guyana. Ramsammy has repeatedly denied any links to Khan.