Source: http://info.sfcriminallawspecialist.com/bid/91740/S-e-n-t-e-n-c-i-n-g-P-a-r-t-n-e-r-s-A-u-g-u-s-t-Part-I
Timestamp: 2017-04-30 12:59:57
Document Index: 472766090

Matched Legal Cases: ['§90', '§2', '§2', '§2', '§18', '§2', '§ 1029', '§ 1028', '§1028', '§2', '§2', '§2']

S e n t e n c i n g P a r t n e r s - A u g u s t - Part I Blog
S e n t e n c i n g P a r t n e r s - A u g u s t - Part I Posted by
Chris Morales on Wed, Sep 10, 2014 @ 09:58 AM
The defendant entered the United States in November 2008 and was soon arrested in North Carolina on drug trafficking charges. He pled guilty in state court to four counts of selling heroin, each a Class G felony offense under N.C. Gen. Stat. §90- 95(a) & (b). The offense carried a maximum statutory sentence of 16 months in prison, but he was sentenced pursuant to a plea agreement that, upon acceptance by the court, established a binding sentencing range of 10 to 12 months. The state judge accepted the plea and imposed a sentence of 10 to 12 months. In January 2010, after serving his sentence, the defendant was removed to Mexico. Five months later he reentered without permission and returned to North Carolina, where he was arrested a few weeks later for resisting a public officer, and charged with illegal reentry by a removed alien. He pled guilty to the charge. The PSR recommended a 12-point enhancement based on the prior N.C. conviction being a “felony drug trafficking offense,” under §2L1.2(b)(1)(B), applicable to “any federal, state, or local offense punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year.” The defendant contended that because his N.C. plea agreement capped his sentence at 12 months once the court accepted his plea, the conviction was not punishable by more than one year in prison and did not constitute a felony under §2L1.2(b)(1)(B). The district court rejected the argument and sentenced the defendant to 27 months. The defendant raised the same argument on appeal, citing Carachuri-Rosendo v. Holder, 560 U.S. 563 (2010), where the Court held that, for purposes of the Immigration and Nationality Act, a prior conviction constitutes an “aggravated felony” - i.e., a crime for which the maximum term of imprisonment exceeds one year - only if the defendant was “actually convicted of a crime that is itself punishable as a felony under federal law.” See also United States v. Simmons, 649 F.3d 237 (4th Cir. 2011) (en banc). The Fourth Circuit affirmed, explaining that “North Carolina’s unique sentencing regime, not a plea agreement, determines whether a defendant’s conviction is punishable by imprisonment exceeding one year and so qualifies as a federal sentencing predicate.” In this case, the N.C. statute “authorized a maximum sentence of 16 months’ imprisonment for his prior conviction. That the sentence ultimately imposed pursuant to his plea deal was 10 to 12 months’ imprisonment is irrelevant. [the defendant’s] North Carolina conviction was punishable by imprisonment exceeding one year based on his prior record level, offense class, and sentencing range. It therefore qualifies as a federal sentencing predicate.” Senior Circuit Judge Davis dissented, writing that he “would treat such an offender as if the state court judge had found him statutorily ineligible for a sentence of more than one year, which of course was true once the judge accepted his guilty plea and before imposing sentence.”
The defendant pled guilty to illegal reentry after being deported. The PSR recommended a sixteen level enhancement under §2L1.2(b)(1)(A)(ii), based on two 2004 Virginia convictions for Assault and Battery on a Family Member, a Class 1 misdemeanor under Va. Code §18.2-57.2(A). The enhancement is applied where a defendant illegally reenters after receiving a felony conviction for a crime of violence. No objections were made to the PSR. After addressing a policy disagreement with §2L1.2, noting that “this particular guideline’s sentencing enhancements are divorced from empirical data,” the district court varied downward to a sentence of 36 months. On appeal, the defendant argued that the district court erred in using the two Virginia convictions as support for the crime-of-violence enhancement where the language of the statute clearly showed that they were misdemeanors. Reviewing for plain error, the Tenth Circuit reversed, finding that the error was plain and clear. It also found that that there was a reasonable probability that, absent the district court’s error, the defendant would have received a different sentence. Without the 16-point enhancement, his sentencing range would have been either 30 to 37 months or 33 to 41 months. This error affected the defendant’s substantial rights. Finally, the court concluded that the error seriously affected “the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings” because the PSR “disregarded the express language of the Virginia statute in treating [the defendant’s] domestic-violence convictions as felonies - instead of, properly, as misdemeanors - and the district court endorsed this obvious error and predicated its Guidelines computation on it. The result was a dramatic increase in [the defendant’s] Guidelines range - that is, a doubling of it - and we have determined that there is a reasonable probability that this error prejudiced him.” Because the defendant met all four prongs of plain error, the sentence was vacated and remanded.
The defendant and an accomplice were found with ten prepaid debit cards in their possession. The cards were issued in other people’s names and had been fraudulently obtained by the defendant who filed fraudulent tax returns submitted in the individuals’ names to the IRS, which then sent the debit cards loaded with the tax refunds. The defendant and his accomplice would use them to withdraw money from ATM machines or buy Western Union money orders. The defendant pled guilty to trafficking in one or more unauthorized access devices in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1029(b)(2), and to aggravated identity theft in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1028A. The aggravated identity theft charge was based on the defendant having transferred an access device to his accomplice. This offense carried a mandatory two year consecutive sentence where a defendant was convicted of certain predicate crimes and during or in relation to those crimes, he knowingly transferred, possessed or used without authority a means of identification of another person. In this case, the conviction for trafficking in unauthorized access devices was a predicate offense, requiring the two year consecutive sentence for the §1028A offense. The district court sentenced him to 24 months on the trafficking in unauthorized access devices offense, followed by the mandatory two years for aggravated identity theft. In calculating the 24-month sentence, the district court included a two-level enhancement for the production or trafficking of unauthorized devices under §2B1.1(b)(11)(B), to which the defendant objected, and ultimately appealed. On appeal, the Eleventh Circuit agreed with the defendant. The guideline relevant to the aggravated identity theft offense, §2B1.6, specified that when the sentence was being imposed along with a sentence for an underlying offense, the court was not to apply an enhancement for the transfer, possession, or use of a means of identification when determining the underlying offense sentence. The guidelines explained that this prohibition was because a sentence under §2B1.6 already accounted for the factor. The sentence was vacated and the case was remanded. Tags: