Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca10-89-06134/USCOURTS-ca10-89-06134-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Jerry Lee Pulliam
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

.. 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

TENTH CIRCUIT 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

FI LED 

United States Court of Appeals 

Tenth Cirmit 

MAR 19 1990 

&OBERT L. HOECKER 

Clerk 

v. No. 89-6134 

JERRY LEE PULLIAM, 

Defendant-Appellant. 

(D.C. No. CR 88-251-R) 

(W.D. Okla.) 

ORDER AND JUDGMENT* 

Before*fACHA and EBEL, Circuit Judges, and SAFFELS, District 

Judge. 

This appeal is from a sentencing order of the district court 

imposing a sentence of eighteen months upon defendant after a plea 

of guilty to possession of three handguns after having been 

convicted of a felony. The district court departed upward from 

the Sentencing Guideline range of one to seven months and imposed 

a sentence of eighteen months incarceration. The district court 

based this upward departure on three aggravating circumstances: 

(1) the violent nature of the defendant's prior felony; (2) the 

number of weapons found in the defendant's possession; and (3) the 

circumstances surrounding the defendant's arrest, namely that the 

defendant admitted that he obtained one of the handguns to use 

* This order and judgment has no precedential value and shall 

not be cited, or used by any court within the Tenth Circuit, 

except for purposes of establishing the doctrines of the law of 

the case, res judicata, or collateral estoppel. 10th Cir. R. 

36.3. 

** The Honorable Dale E. Saffels, District Judge, United States 

District Court for the District of Kansas, sitting by designation. 

Appellate Case: 89-6134 Document: 01019966391 Date Filed: 03/19/1990 Page: 1 
against the police, and when arrested one of the firearms was 

loaded and available for his use against the police. On appeal, 

defendant alleges that the district court improperly departed from 

the Guidelines by taking into account factors that were already 

considered by the Sentencing Guidelines Commission in establishing 

the Guidelines. We disagree. 

In reviewing upward departures from the Guidelines, we first 

determine whether the circumstances cited by the district court 

justify a departure from the Guidelines. United States v. White, 

No. 89-3003 (10th Cir. Jan. 8, 1990). The sentencing court may 

depart upward from the Guidelines only if it finds that there 

exists an aggravating circumstance of a kind, or to a degree, not 

adequately taken into consideration by the Sentencing Commission 

in formulating the guideline that should result in a sentence 

different from this described. Id. This first step is a question 

of law that we review de novo. Id. 

We hold that the aggravating factors cited by the district 

court were not adequately considered by the Sentencing Commission 

in formulating Guideline section 2K2.l and that the nature of 

these aggravating circumstances was sufficiently unusual to 

justify an upward departure from the section 2K2.l recommended 

sentencing range of one to seven months. We further hold that the 

district court's factual findings of aggravating circumstances 

were not clearly erroneous, and that degree of departure, an 

upward increase of eleven months, was reasonable. See id. 

-2-

ENTERED FOR THE COURT 

Deanell Reece Tacha 

Circuit Judge 

Appellate Case: 89-6134 Document: 01019966391 Date Filed: 03/19/1990 Page: 2