About the bill
Should your jail time be increased if a judge believes you probably committed another crime in addition, but were found not guilty?
Context
In 2005, Antwuan Ball was one of 18 members of the Washington D.C. gang Congress Park Crew arrested on drug charges. While Ball was convicted on the charge of cocaine distribution, he was acquitted of cocaine conspiracy.
Yet at Ball’s sentencing, District Judge Richard Roberts found that even though the evidence for the conspiracy charge may have fallen short of the legal standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt,” there was clearly a preponderance of evidence nonetheless. He cited testimony from fellow witnesses, including “What [Ball] says goes’” and “‘If something was going down, they would go to Antwuan. He was in charge.”
As a result, …
Sponsor and status
117th Congress (2021–2023)
This bill was introduced in a previous session of Congress and was passed by the House on March 28, 2022 but was never passed by the Senate.
Although this bill was not enacted, its provisions could have become law by being included in another bill. It is common for legislative text to be introduced concurrently in multiple bills (called companion bills), re-introduced in subsequent sessions of Congress in new bills, or added to larger bills (sometimes called omnibus bills).
4 Cosponsors (2 Democrats, 2 Republicans)
Position statements
What legislators are saying
“the daily leader: monday, march 28, 2022”
—
Rep. Steny Hoyer [D-MD5]
on Mar 27, 2022
“the weekly leader: friday, march 25, 2022”
—
Rep. Steny Hoyer [D-MD5]
on Mar 25, 2022
History
H.R. 1621 (117th) was a bill in the United States Congress.
A bill must be passed by both the House and Senate in identical form and then be signed by the President to become law.
Bills numbers restart every two years. That means there are other bills with the number H.R. 1621. This is the one from the 117th Congress.
This bill was introduced in the 117th Congress, which met from Jan 3, 2021 to Jan 3, 2023. Legislation not passed by the end of a Congress is cleared from the books.
How to cite this information.
We recommend the following MLA-formatted citation when using the information you see here in academic work:
“H.R. 1621 — 117th Congress: Prohibiting Punishment of Acquitted Conduct Act of 2021.” www.GovTrack.us. 2021. September 21, 2023 <https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/hr1621>
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Where is this information from?
GovTrack automatically collects legislative information from a variety of governmental and non-governmental sources. This page is sourced primarily from Congress.gov, the official portal of the United States Congress. Congress.gov is generally updated one day after events occur, and so legislative activity shown here may be one day behind. Data via the congress project.
