Monday, March 16, 2020

Court Provided Insufficient Reasons for Rejecting Variance Argument


US v. Torres-Reyes: Torres-Reyes, a Mexican national, had been deported from the United States (once) and allowed to leave voluntarily (twice) before returning “undetected” to the United States in 2001. In 2006 he was charged in state court with a drug offense, but absconded while on bond. Ten years later, he was arrested again in state court, where he eventually pleaded guilty to multiple charges. He was then charged in federal court with illegal reentry, to which he also pleaded guilty. At sentencing, the district court rejected Torres-Reyes’s objection to a 1995 drug conviction being counted in his criminal history score, resulting in an advisory Guideline range of 37 to 46 months. The district court also declined to impose a downward variance, eventually sentencing Torres-Reyes to a term of 37 months in prison.

On appeal, the Fourth Circuit vacated Torres-Reyes’s sentence. It noted that while the district court provided a sufficient explanation for rejecting the legal objection Torres-Reyes made to the inclusion of the 1995 convictions in the Guideline calculations, it did not similarly grapple with the equitable argument that doing so resulted in an advisory Guideline range that overstated the seriousness of Torres-Reyes’s criminal history. Because it was not “patently obvious” that the district court considered the variance argument, the sentence had to be vacated and the case remanded for resentencing.

Congrats to the Defender Office in Eastern NC on the win!

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