Cite as: 520 U. S. 751 (1997)
Breyer, J., dissenting
"(8) for a Class C misdemeanor, not more than thirty days; and
"(9) for an infraction, not more than five days." 18 U. S. C. § 3581(b).
A cross-reference to this classifying subsection does not help, however, for that subsection serves almost no significant purpose in the Federal Criminal Code. In fact, Congress later enacted a technical amendment that eliminated the cross-reference (leaving the word "authorized" without an explicit reference), Pub. L. 99-646, 100 Stat. 3592, because the cross-reference was "misleading" and "incorrect" in that "[t]o date, no Federal offense" uses the classification system in the section to which it referred. H. R. Rep. No. 99-797, p. 18 (1986). The drafters of the technical amendment thought that the "maximum term of an offense is that term prescribed by the provision of law defining the offense." Ibid. But, as we have seen, this view of the matter is not conclusive. See supra, at 770-771.
One can find a possible historical explanation for what occurred. The classifying subsection, like the sentencing law itself, originated in a congressional effort to rewrite the entire Federal Criminal Code. See, e. g., S. 1, 94th Cong., 1st Sess. (1975); S. 1437, 95th Cong., 2d Sess. (1978); S. 1630, 97th Cong., 2d Sess. (1981). That rewrite attached a classifying letter to each substantive crime. The classifying subsection attached a maximum penalty to each letter; and the penalty was a real-time penalty, for the rewrite contained the later enacted new sentencing law, which abolished parole and created real-time sentences. For example, the rewrite characterized its only drug recidivism provision—an enhanced penalty for a recidivist opiate crime—as a Class B felony; to which the classifying subsection attached a 25-year maximum sentence. See, e. g., S. Rep. No. 95-605, pt. 1, pp. 798, 801 (1977). The rewrite did not become law. Congress, instead, enacted into law its sentencing provisions, which included a career offender statute that initially contained a
775
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