United States v. Sabillon-Umana, No. 13-1363 (10th Cir. 2014)
Annotate this CaseThe district judge noted that defendant-appellant Elder Sabillon-Umana was a "bit player" in a larger drug operation. In that light, the sentencing judge stated that he thought a guidelines base offense level of 32 sounded right and he asked the probation officer to offer some justification for that number. The officer told the court that finding Sabillon-Umana responsible for 1.5 kilograms of cocaine and 1.5 kilograms of heroin sold by the larger conspiracy would yield the court’s desired base offense level. By the hearing’s end, the district court adopted those findings as its own and imposed a sentence based on them. The district court is supposed to start with the facts, then consult empirics about similarly situated defendants and the expertise of the Sentencing Commission, and only then make an individualized judgment about the case at hand informed by that information. The district court in this case failed to follow that order, and this, the Tenth Circuit concluded, was error. The case was remanded for resentencing.
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