Opinion ID: 3017000
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Consecutive Running of the Sentences

Text: Nisbett also challenges the District Court’s decision to run his sentences consecutively, arguing that the Guidelines counsel in favor grouping them and accordingly adjusting the offense level of the gun charge. He cites to an application note in the Guidelines, which states that a failure to appear conviction should be treated as an obstruction of justice conviction (§ 3C1.1) and grouped with a conviction for the underlying offense and treated under § 5G1.2 of the Guidelines, which concerns sentencing on multiple counts. Treated as such, the failure to appear count increases the offense level of the underlying count by 2 levels. The judge then determines the “total sentence” from the Guideline range indicated from the adjusted offense level. Then, when parsing the sentence, the judge apportions some amount of the sentence to the underlying count and the rest to the failure to appear charge, in order to satisfy the consecutive sentencing requirement of 18 U.S.C. § 3146. See 8 § 3146(b)(2) (mandating that sentences for failure to appear charges be run consecutively to sentences for other charges); see also United States v. Pardo, 25 F.3d 1187, 1193 (3d Cir. 1994) (explaining this grouping concept). The entire argument, however, is framed in a context in which the Guidelines are applied to the Virgin Islands gun charge, as requested by Nisbett, but rejected in the previous section of this opinion. Thus, because the Guidelines should not be applied to that charge, it is not possible to “group” the charges under the Guidelines, as the Virgin Islands charge has no offense level, rendering a 2 level upward adjustment without meaning. For this reason, the argument must be rejected.