United States v. Abreu, No. 20-2786 (3d Cir. 2022)
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In 2020, Abreu pleaded guilty to possessing a firearm as a convicted felon, 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1). His PSR calculated his Guidelines range applying the enhancement for a defendant who “committed any part of the instant offense” after a felony conviction for either a “crime of violence” or a “controlled substance offense” U.S.S.G. 2K2.1(a)(4). The enhancement was predicated on his prior conviction for conspiracy to commit second-degree aggravated assault under New Jersey law, The district court applied the enhancement and sentenced Abreu to 56 months’ imprisonment.
Following a 2019 Supreme Court case, Kisor v. Wilkie, the Third Circuit reexamined 4B1.2 and concluded that the text of the “controlled substance offense” prong unambiguously excluded inchoate crimes and overruled its “Hightower” precedent. The Third Circuit then vacated Abreu’s sentence, citing the Guidelines’ text and recent Supreme Court precedent and declining to defer to the commentary to 2K2.1, which purports to define the term “crime of violence” to encompass conspiracy crimes.
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