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Sentencing Guidelines

By: Derek Hawkins//September 26, 2021//

Sentencing Guidelines

By: Derek Hawkins//September 26, 2021//

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7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: United States of America v. Keenan Rollerson

Case No.: 20-2258

Officials: EASTERBROOK, ROVNER, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Sentencing Guidelines

A jury convicted defendant Keenan Rollerson on drug and firearm charges but acquitted him on other drug charges. He appeals only his sentence, arguing that the district court erred by increasing his Sentencing Guideline range based on drug activity for which he was either acquitted or never charged. Specifically, Rollerson claims that the prosecution did not present sufficiently reliable information that he sold heroin and fentanyl to an informant during four controlled drug buys for which he was not charged. He also asserts that those uncharged controlled buys and other drugs for which he was acquitted were not “part of the same course of conduct … scheme or plan” as his offenses of conviction. U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3(a)(2). We affirm Rollerson’s sentence because the conduct at issue was supported by sufficiently reliable information and was relevant to his convictions. To be sure, the record at sentencing on the controlled buys was sparse. But at least in the absence of contradictory evidence, a police officer’s affidavit attesting that the buys actually occurred provided the “modicum of reliability” that is needed to find by a preponderance of the evidence that Rollerson committed those additional crimes. See United States v. Helding, 948 F.3d 864, 871 (7th Cir. 2020).

Affirmed

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Derek A Hawkins is Corporate Counsel, at Salesforce.

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