United States v. Clay

Defendant pled guilty to a drug offense and was sentenced as a career offender. On appeal, defendant challenged his within-guidelines sentence, arguing that the district court failed to appreciate that 18 U.S.C. 3553(a) provided it with discretion to vary from the advisory sentencing range under the Sentencing Guidelines. The court concluded that the district court committed procedural error when it treated defendant's guidelines sentence as effectively mandatory because the recommended sentence was predicated on the career-offender-guideline enhancement. In this case, the district court's error likely affected the sentence it imposed and the error was not harmless. Accordingly, the court vacated the sentence and remanded. View "United States v. Clay" on Justia Law