United States v. Moses, No. 21-4067 (4th Cir. 2022)
Annotate this Case
Moses was convicted of two counts of drug trafficking. The district court sentenced him as a career offender under U.S.S.G. 4B1.1, based on two prior drug-trafficking convictions. Moses argued that the conduct involved in one prior conviction was part of the same course of conduct as his current offenses and should have been considered “relevant conduct” under section 1B1.3, rather than as criminal history. Application Note 5(C) to section 1B1.3 states that “conduct associated with a sentence that was imposed prior to” the conduct of the instant offense “is not considered” to be relevant conduct. Moses argued that Application Note 5(C) is not entitled to controlling weight.
The Fourth Circuit affirmed, declining to apply the Supreme Court’s 2019 “Kisor” rule, which limited controlling deference to an executive agency’s reasonable interpretation of its own regulations to where “the regulation is genuinely ambiguous.” The court applied the 1993 “Stinson” ruling, which held that Guidelines commentary, even when the related Guideline is unambiguous, is authoritative and binding on courts unless the commentary is inconsistent with law or the Guideline itself. Noting disagreement among the circuits, the court reasoned that subjecting Guidelines commentary to the Kisor framework would deny courts the benefit of much of the Guidelines commentary. The Guidelines themselves state that the failure to follow commentary could result in “an incorrect application of the guidelines” and subject sentences to “possible reversal on appeal,” U.S.S.G. 1B1.7.
The court issued a subsequent related opinion or order on March 23, 2022.
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.