United States v. Rodriguez-Castro, No. 10-50273 (9th Cir. 2011)
Annotate this CaseDefendant pled guilty to importing 33.46 kilograms of cocaine in violation of 21 U.S.C. 952 and 960 and sentenced to 57 months imprisonment. At issue was whether the district court erred in declining to decrease the base offense level, as recommended by the plea agreement he had entered into with the government, where the district court found that he had failed to demonstrate that he was a minor participant in the offense. The court held that the district court did not clearly error in its factual determination or abuse its discretion in declining to award the minor-role adjustment under U.S.S.G. 3B1.2(b) and that there was no support in the record for defendant's claim that the judge purposefully circumvented U.S.S.G. 2D1.1(a)(5). The court also held that the sentence imposed was substantively reasonable where it weighed the totality of the circumstances and the 18 U.S.C. 3553 factors. Accordingly, the court affirmed the sentence imposed upon defendant by the district court.
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