42
Opinion of the Court
in lieu of the sentence of probation, under the United States Sentencing Guidelines. Granderson's construction calls for a 2-month mandatory minimum. The Court of Appeals accepted Granderson's interpretation, see 969 F. 2d 980 (CA11 1992); returns in other Circuits are divided.1
The "original sentence" prescription of § 3565(a) was a late-hour addition to the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, a sprawling enactment that takes up 364 pages in the Statutes at Large. Pub. L. 100-690, 102 Stat. 4181-4545. The provision appears not to have received Congress' careful attention. It may have been composed, we suggest below, with the pre-1984 federal sentencing regime in the drafters' minds; it does not easily adapt to the regime established by the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984.
According the statute a sensible construction, we recognize, in common with all courts that have grappled with the "original sentence" conundrum, that Congress prescribed imprisonment as the type of punishment for drug-possessing probationers.2 As to the duration of that punishment, we rest on the principle that " 'the Court will not interpret a federal criminal statute so as to increase the penalty . . . when such an interpretation can be based on no more than a
1 Compare United States v. Penn, 17 F. 3d 70 (CA4 1994); United States v. Alese, 6 F. 3d 85 (CA2 1993) (per curiam); United States v. Diaz, 989 F. 2d 391 (CA10 1993); United States v. Clay, 982 F. 2d 959 (CA6 1993), cert. pending, No. 93-52; United States v. Gordon, 961 F. 2d 426 (CA3 1992) (all interpreting "original sentence" to mean the period of incarceration originally available under the United States Sentencing Guidelines), with United States v. Sosa, 997 F. 2d 1130 (CA5 1993); United States v. Byrkett, 961 F. 2d 1399 (CA8 1992); United States v. Corpuz, 953 F. 2d 526 (CA9 1992) (all reading "original sentence" to refer to the term of the revoked probation).
2 The interpretation offered by Justice Kennedy—a reduced sentence of probation as the mandatory minimum—is notable for its originality. No court that has essayed construction of the prescription at issue has come upon the answer Justice Kennedy finds clear in "the text and structure of the statute." Post, at 60, 68. But cf. post, at 67 (describing the statute as "far from transparent").
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