Opinion ID: 711611
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Oscar Virta

Text: 9 The district court held Oscar Virta responsible for 1,610 doses of LSD weighing 10.004 grams, including the carrier medium to which the LSD was affixed. He received an adjusted sentence of 150 months. 10 Oscar Virta asserts that the district court abused its discretion by not applying Amendment 488 retroactively to his sentence. He notes that, had the court given it retroactive application, the applicable guideline range would have been less than ten years. Ingram would therefore require application of Sec. 841's mandatory minimum ten-year sentence because the weight of these doses including the carrier medium exceeded ten grams. 11 However, a district court is not required to give retroactive application to an amended guideline range. Rather, the decision to reduce a sentence for that reason is discretionary. U.S.S.G. Sec. 1B1.10(a) provides, [w]here a defendant is serving a term of imprisonment, and the guideline range applicable to the defendant has subsequently been lowered as a result of an amendment to the [guidelines listed in Sec. 1B1.10(c) ], a reduction in defendant's term of imprisonment is authorized under 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3582(c)(2). The language is authorized is not mandatory and commits sentence reductions to the discretion of the district court. United States v. Holmes, 13 F.3d 1217, 1222 (8th Cir.1994). Furthermore, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3582(c)(2) provides that the district court's discretion is to be guided by those factors set forth in 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3553(a), all of which the district court properly considered. For example, the court evaluated the nature and circumstances of Oscar Virta's offense and termed them remarkably extensive and involving an extraordinary number of people. The court also considered the need for deterrence. Given these concerns, we are not prepared to find that the district court abused its discretion in refusing to apply Amendment 488 retroactively to Oscar Virta's sentence.