Sentencing — crack cocaine

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United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Criminal

Sentencing — crack cocaine

Where the district court determined at sentencing that a defendant’s relevant conduct was at least thirty-one kilograms of crack cocaine, the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying a motion under 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2) for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.

“Irons now argues that the district court erred because it never found him responsible for thirty-one kilograms of crack cocaine at his sentencing, as the district court suggested in denying his motion. At sentencing, after hearing testimony from both Irons and the government, the court specifically adopted the PSR’s finding, and rejected Irons’s objection to the PSR finding that his relevant conduct was at least thirty-one kilograms. We affirmed the court’s determination of the finding of relevant conduct on appeal, and again on the appeal of Irons’s first § 3582(c)(2) motion. District courts may rely on the information in a PSR for purposes of sentencing ‘so long as it is well-supported and appears reliable.’ United States v. Moreno-Padilla, 602 F.3d 802, 808 (7th Cir. 2010). ‘In the absence of actual evidence controverting the information in the PSR, i.e., something more than the appellants’ mere denials, it [is] not necessary for [a] court to conduct any further inquiry into the disputed sentencing issues.’ United States v. Taylor, 72 F.3d 533, 547 (7th Cir. 1995). Accordingly, we reject this argument.”

Affirmed.

12-2377 U.S. v. Irons

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, Herndon, J., Norgle, J.