United States v. Liberse, No. 12-10243 (11th Cir. 2012)
Annotate this CaseThis case represented the third decision the Eleventh Circuit issued within a month concerning the application of Amendments 750 and 759 to the sentencing guidelines and the scope of a district court’s authority to reduce a defendant’s sentence under 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2). In the first two decisions, the Court held that those amendments did not authorize a court to reduce a sentence under section 3582(c)(2) if the defendant’s guidelines range remained the statutory mandatory minimum after the amendments or if the guidelines range was otherwise not affected by the amendments. This appeal raised a different issue because the pro se appellant’s original guidelines range of 121 to 151 months was above, and thus not affected by, the applicable statutory mandatory minimum of 120 months. As a result, Amendments 750 and 759 would reduce his guidelines range. For those reasons, section 3582(c)(2) gave the district court authority to reduce the sentence in its discretion. But because the district court in this case believed it lacked that authority, the Eleventh Circuit vacated that order denying the motion for resentencing and remanded for the court to determine whether to exercise its discretion to reduce the sentence.
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