United States v. Snowden, No. 15-1107 (10th Cir. 2015)
Annotate this CaseDefendant Blake Snowden pleaded guilty to unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer and to intercepting emails. In calculating his offense level under the sentencing guidelines, the district court applied a 16-level enhancement after finding that these crimes caused losses exceeding a million dollars. The resulting guideline sentencing range was 41–51 months’ imprisonment. The court ultimately imposed a 30-month sentence. Defendant argues that the district court erred in calculating loss and thereby arrived at an unduly high guideline sentencing range. After review, the Tenth Circuit concluded that if there was any error, it was harmless because it did not affect the sentence: the trial court, after thoroughly exploring the matter, explained why the sentence was proper under 18 U.S.C. 3553 and unequivocally stated that it would impose the same sentence even if 30 months exceeded the correct guideline range. On one ground, however, the Tenth Circuit reversed: the district court ordered restitution in the amount of $25,354. Both parties agreed that this was an oversight that should have been corrected on remand to $24,174.
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