United States v. Suarez, No. 16-41267 (5th Cir. 2018)
Annotate this CaseThe Fifth Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction for his involvement in a drug trafficking conspiracy and for firearm offenses. The court held that defendant's convictions were supported by sufficient evidence. However, the court vacated defendant's sentence, holding that the mandatory minimum sentence of 120 months of imprisonment was inapplicable. In this case, the court could not say that the jury "surely" would have found that defendant possessed the shotgun in furtherance of a drug trafficking at the time alleged in the indictment. Therefore, the court exercised its discretion under the plain error standard of review to remand to the district court for resentencing.
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.