Sentencing Guidelines – Enhancements

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: United States of America v. Christian M. Lovies

Case No.: 20-2463

Officials: BRENNAN, SCUDDER, and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Sentencing Guidelines – Enhancements

Christian Lovies, wielding a gun, stole Emily Butler’s car as she was filling it with gasoline. Along with three other individuals, including a minor, Lovies kidnapped Butler and took her from Indianapolis to Cincinnati while threatening to kill her.

A federal grand jury indicted Lovies for kidnapping, carjacking, and brandishing a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence. After a trial, a jury found Lovies guilty on all counts, and the district judge sentenced him to an imprisonment term within the applicable Sentencing Guidelines range. Lovies appeals his conviction, arguing the district court improperly denied a Batson challenge he raised during jury selection. He also contends the trial court erred in applying two sentencing enhancements: one for use of a minor to commit the offense, and one for his role in the offense.

In rejecting Lovies’s Batson challenge, the district court found the prosecutors credible and their explanation for exercising the challenged peremptory strike to be plausible. We owe great deference to the district court’s credibility determinations, and we cannot say its factual findings were clearly erroneous, so we affirm the denial of Lovies’s Batson challenge and his conviction. The district court’s factual findings were also adequate to support the application of the two sentencing enhancements, and any error with respect to the calculation of Lovies’s Guidelines range would be harmless. We therefore affirm Lovies’s sentence as well.

Affirmed
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Derek A Hawkins is Corporate Counsel, at Salesforce.