United States v. Hayes, No. 11-13678 (11th Cir. 2014)
Annotate this CaseDefendant, a business owner, appealed his sentence after being convicted of bribing a state official in order to ensure that his company would continue to receive government contracts. Over a period of four years, defendant doled out over $600,000 in bribes and his company reaped over $5 million in profits as a result of the corrupt payments. The court concluded that the concurrent three-year probationary sentences were substantively unreasonable given the factors set forth in 18 U.S.C. 3553(a): (1) the sentences convey the message "that would-be white-collar criminals stand to lose little more than a portion of their ill-gotten gains and practically none of their liberty," and accordingly do not constitute just punishment for defendant's offenses or promote respect for the law; (2) the sentences do not provide general deterrence; and (3) the sentences were not required to eliminate any sentencing disparity among similarly situated offenders because no such disparity existed. Accordingly, the court vacated and remanded.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.