United States v. Garcia, No. 10-10869 (5th Cir. 2011)
Annotate this CaseDefendant pleaded guilty of possession with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of cocaine and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug-trafficking crime. Defendant subsequently appealed the reduction of his sentence made pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 3582(c). The court held that defendant failed to show that the district court abused its discretion by reducing his sentence in the matter that it did and therefore, the district court did not err in rejecting defendant's first and second proposed calculated methods. The court also held that the district court did not reject defendant's third comparable-reduction argument, that the court eliminated its recency points, because it lacked the authority to do so. Instead, the district court rejected that argument because it believed that further reducing defendant's criminal history was unnecessary because it had already reduced that history once before. The court further held that Congress had set forth sufficient standards for the Commission in exercising its discretion and U.S.S.G. 1B1.10 did not present a separation-of-powers problem. Accordingly, because the district court did not err or abuse its discretion, the court affirmed the judgment.
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