Opinion ID: 77388
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Career Offender Guideline Provision

Text: 42 Appellant next argues the district court erred in refusing to sentence Williams as a career offender. There is no dispute that Williams qualified as a career offender under U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1. At sentencing, however, the district court stated the career offender enhancement is a totally inappropriate way to consider the individual nature of an offense or a defendant's individual background and said it was not going to sentence Williams as a career offender. In its sentencing memorandum, the district court again explained what it considered to be the arbitrary compounding effect of the career offender enhancement. Williams, 372 F.Supp.2d at 1339. This, too, was error. 43 In creating the Sentencing Commission and charging it with establishing sentencing policies and practices for the federal criminal justice system, Congress directed the Commission to: 44 assure that the guidelines specify a sentence to a term of imprisonment at or near the maximum term authorized for categories of defendants in which the defendant is eighteen years old or older and— 45
46 (A) a crime of violence; or 47 (B) an offense described in section 401 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 841) . . .; and 48 (2) has previously been convicted of two or more prior felonies, each of which is— 49 (A) a crime of violence; or 50 (B) an offense described in section 401 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 841). . . . 51 28 U.S.C. § 994(h). Section 994(h) reflects Congress's policy that repeat drug offenders receive sentences at or near the enhanced statutory maximums set out in § 841(b). See United States v. LaBonte, 520 U.S. 751, 762, 117 S.Ct. 1673, 1679, 137 L.Ed.2d 1001 (1997) (holding the phrase `at or near the maximum term authorized' . . . requires a court to sentence a career offender `at or near' the `maximum' prison term available once all relevant statutory sentencing enhancements are taken into account). 52 Congress's goal was not simply to punish offenders with prior criminal histories more severely than first time offenders; Congress also wanted to target specific recidivism, particularly repeat drug offenders. There is no question Williams is a recidivist drug dealer. To the extent the district court believed Williams' prior criminal history was adequately taken into consideration in his criminal history category of VI, it ignored Congress's policy of targeting recidivist drug offenders for more severe punishment. The district court, therefore, erred in mitigating Williams' sentence based on its disagreement with the career offender Guidelines provision. 53