United States v. Powell, No. 14-3932 (6th Cir. 2015)
Annotate this CasePowell pleaded guilty to drug and weapons charges, preserving the right to appeal his sentence. The court classified Powell as a career offender and sentenced him to 155 months’ imprisonment, near the low end of the Guidelines range. The Sixth Circuit vacated and remanded. The court improperly classified Powell as a career offender, which affected the calculation of his criminal history points. In February 2001, while in court on an unrelated charge, Powell was served with a summons and given notice of an aggravated-assault charge against him. Approximately two months later, Powell was arrested for a second felony—assault on a police officer. He was sentenced for both crimes on the same day. The district court erroneously interpreted U.S.S.G. 4A1.2(a)(2) to conclude that the service of a summons regarding the first offense before commission of the second offense was sufficient to treat the offenses separately. The section states: If there is no intervening arrest, prior sentences are counted separately unless (A) the sentences resulted from offenses contained in the same charging instrument; or (B) the sentences were imposed on the same day. If the Sentencing Commission had intended for the words “intervening arrest” to encompass other intervening events such as summonses, it could easily have used a broader term.
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.