Cite as: 516 U. S. 284 (1996)
Opinion of the Court
drugs and petitioner's prior convictions resulted in a Guidelines sentencing range of 188 to 235 months' imprisonment, even after an adjustment for petitioner's acceptance of responsibility for the crime. The District Court imposed concurrent sentences of 192 months' imprisonment on each count, to be followed by five years of supervised release.
In November 1993, the United States Sentencing Commission revised the method of calculating the weight of LSD in the Sentencing Guidelines. United States Sentencing Commission, Guidelines Manual, App. C., Amdt. 488 (Nov. 1995) (1995 USSG). Departing from its former approach of weighing the entire mixture or substance containing LSD, the amended Guideline instructed courts to give each dose of LSD on a carrier medium a constructive or presumed weight of 0.4 milligrams. Id., § 2D1.1(c), n. (H). The revised Guideline was retroactive, id., App. C, Amdt. 502, and one month later petitioner filed a motion to modify his sentence, see 18 U. S. C. § 3582(c)(2). He contended that the weight of the LSD attributable to him under the amended Guidelines was 4.58 grams (11,456 doses × 0.4 milligrams). For that amount, the applicable sentencing range under the Guidelines would be 70 to 87 months of imprisonment. The 10-year statutory minimum of § 841(b)(1)(A)(v) was no bar to a reduced sentence, petitioner argued, because the presumptive-weight method of the Guidelines should also control the mandatory minimum calculation. The 4.58 grams attributable to him by the Guidelines method would be well short of the 10 grams necessitating a 10-year minimum sentence.
The District Court, following our recent decision in Chapman v. United States, 500 U. S. 453 (1991), ruled that the blotter paper must be weighed in determining whether petitioner crossed the 10-gram threshold of § 841(b)(1)(A)(v). It held that the mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years still applied to petitioner notwithstanding the sentencing range under the Guidelines. Since the Guidelines no longer au-
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