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Sentencing – Crack cocaine

By: Rick Benedict//April 23, 2014//

Sentencing – Crack cocaine

By: Rick Benedict//April 23, 2014//

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U.S. Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit

Criminal

Sentencing – Crack cocaine

Where the defendant convicted of a crack cocaine offense is a career offender, his sentence cannot be reduced based on subsequent changes to the sentencing guidelines.

“The sentencing court’s determination that Stevenson was a career offender was a ‘guidelines decision’ and remains in place despite the subsequent changes to the crack cocaine guidelines. See United States v. Waters, 648 F.3d 1114, 1117 (9th Cir. 2011). Where a defendant’s conduct-based offense level exceeds the career offender guideline (or other mandatory minimum sentence) and the defendant is sentenced based on the higher offense level, his sentence cannot later be reduced below the career offender level, provided the original sentencing court found that he was a career offender. To hold otherwise would grant a windfall to convicted criminals whose onetime offense conduct was so egregious the corresponding sentence exceeded the relevant career criminal sentence.”

Affirmed.

12-3108 U.S. v. Stevenson

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Bucklo, J., Kanne, J.

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