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Plea Agreement

By: Derek Hawkins//September 12, 2016//

Plea Agreement

By: Derek Hawkins//September 12, 2016//

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7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: United States of America v. Cedric J. Morris

Case No.: 15-2402

Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, KANNE and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Plea Agreement

Government did not breach plea agreement by making sentencing recommendations where entitlement to make sentence recommendations was not mentioned in the same plea agreement.

“Morris relies on United States v. Navarro, 817 F.3d 494 (7th Cir. 2015), for the proposition that the government breached the plea agreement by recommending an enhancement that the parties had not discussed. But in Navarro the government advocated for an upward variance from the Guidelines range that the district court had calculated, not an enhancement to the defendant’s base offense level. The distinction is important: By recommending an upward variance, the government violated the express terms of the plea agreement, which required it to recommend a sentence within the Guidelines range calculated by the district court. Id. at 499. In the present case, the government recommended an enhancement, which is not equivalent to seeking a sentence outside the Guidelines range. Cf. id. at 500 (“We have recognized a clear distinction between adjustments to the [G]uidelines range and departures from them.”). Nothing in the plea agreement prohibited the government from making that recommendation.

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.

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