Sentencing — incorrect guideline range

Listen to this article

United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Criminal

Sentencing — incorrect guideline range

An incorrect guideline calculation constitutes plain error and warrants a remand for resentencing, unless the error in no way affected the district court’s selection of a particular sentence.

“Here, we have no reason to believe that the error had no impact on the sentence. The court explicitly tied the sentence to the Guidelines range, making it clear that it was imposing a sentence at the high end of the Guidelines range when it gave the consecutive life sentences. Therefore, we cannot assume that the court would have imposed the same sentence had it understood that the consecutive Guidelines range extended to 30 years rather than life. Although the court clearly wanted to impose a significant sentence, there is no way to know whether that would have been 30 years, a lower or higher number of years, or life. Therefore, we must remand for the court to determine the sentence in light of the proper Guidelines recommendation.”

Affirmed in part, and Vacated in part.

11-1208 U.S. v. Martin

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, Gilbert, J., Rovner, J.