Opinion ID: 615992
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Scope of Remand for Taylor's Re-Sentencing

Text: As with Barnes, the only sentencing issue we confronted on Taylor's appeal was whether the district court erroneously calculated his Guideline range based upon forty kilograms of cocaine. United States v. Taylor, 600 F.3d 863, 870-71 (7th Cir. 2010). We agreed with Taylor: The district court . . . sentenced . . . four co-conspirators on the finding that the conspiracy involved five-to-fifteen kilograms of cocaine. Then, at the sentencing hearings for Barnes and Taylor, the district court found that the conspiracy involved forty kilograms of cocaine. . . . [W]ithout a justification for treating these co-defendants differently when determining the amount of drugs attributable to the conspiracy, it was clear error for the district court to find one drug quantity for [the four co-defendants], and a different drug quantity for Taylor on an identical record. Id. at 871-72. We vacated Taylor's sentence and ordered a general remand for re-sentencing. Id. at 872 (We vacate Taylor's sentence and remand for re-sentencing.). The district court understood the remand order as instructions to re-sentence Taylor based on a drug quantity consistent with that attributed to his co-conspirators: [t]he sufficiency of the factual support for using forty kilograms to determine the base offense level was not the issue that ultimately required remand. Rather, it was . . . the sentencing of other co-conspirators on the basis of factual stipulations for between five and fifteen kilograms of cocaine. Consequently, the court recalculated Taylor's Guideline range using five-to-fifteen kilograms as the pertinent drug quantity. It re-sentenced him to 188 months in prison for the conspiracy count of the indictment.