United States v. Khan, No. 20-20030 (5th Cir. 2021)
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The Fifth Circuit reversed defendant's below-Guidelines sentence imposed after he pleaded guilty to a terrorism charge. The court concluded that defendant's sentence was substantively unreasonable where the district court did not account for a sentencing factor -- the seriousness of defendant's offense -- that should have received significant weight. In this case, the judge characterized and discounted defendant's conduct effectively so as to contradict the facts defendant admitted in his plea agreement. Furthermore, the judge failed to acknowledge that defendant had facilitated and fully supported the purposes and atrocities of ISIS.
Accordingly, the court remanded for a second resentencing. Because the sentencing judge seems immovable from his views of the sentence he imposed, and because the judge displayed bias against the government and its lawyers, the court sua sponte reassigned this case to a different judge.
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