United States v. Lopez-Macia, No. 10-1494 (10th Cir. 2011)
Annotate this CaseThis appeal presented the Tenth Circuit with two questions related to the presence of "fast-track" programs for disposing of illegal re-entry and other immigration offenses in some federal districts, but not others. The first question was whether a sentencing court in a non-fast-track district has the discretion to consider sentence disparities caused by the existence of fast-track programs in other districts, and based thereon, vary from the applicable guideline range for a defendant charged with an immigration offense. If so, the second issue was whether the "apparently nebulous" eligibility requirements for fast-track programs relieve a defendant charged with an immigration offense in a non-fast-track district of the burden of showing entitlement to sentencing consistent with a fast-track program. Upon review, the Tenth Circuit held that (1) where the circumstances warrant, a district court in a non-fast-track district has the discretion to vary from a defendant’s applicable guideline range based on fast-track sentence disparities, but (2) a defendant bears the initial burden of showing entitlement, in some sense, to a variance based on fast-track sentence disparities.
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