Sentencing

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: United States of America v. Alfredo Vasquez-Hernandez

Case No.: 14-3622

Officials: EASTERBROOK, WILLIAMS, and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Sentencing

Judge justified imposing sentence above guidelines

“Vasquez-Hernandez maintains that the judge should not have imposed a sentence longer than 235 months, the top of the range as the court calculated it. His sentence was 29 months higher, which does not require elaborate justification. The quantity table in U.S.S.G. §2D1.1 assigns 150 to 450 kilograms of cocaine to offense level 36. Vasquez-Hernandez was responsible for at least 276 kilograms of cocaine, almost double what is necessary to produce that level. The judge also suspected that Vasquez-Hernandez was lying when he said that these 276 kilos represent the only drugs for which he is responsible, and that he is just the proprietor of a struggling auto-repair shop who accepted help in the form of 276 kilos of cocaine from friends who wanted to assist his family financially. The judge stated: “I cannot sit here, as a judge who’s been on the bench for 20 years and who’s been involved in the drug war for a good portion of my life, and think for one second, nor do I think any other Chicagoan could think for one second that this was the first time that you just happened to do this, that you … got up out of bed and said, well, let me do a 276-kilogram transaction to Chicago today.””

Affirmed

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Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.