United States v. Howard, No. 09-2468 (6th Cir. 2011)
Annotate this CaseIn 2004, defendant entered a guilty plea to possession of 7.5 grams of crack cocaine, but failed to appear for sentencing and avoided arrest for several months. The original Guideline range, 60-71 months, was increased by two levels for obstruction of justice; a three-point reduction for acceptance of responsibility was denied. The final range was 97-121 months. The district court imposed a sentence of 97 months, which was affirmed. On a subsequent motion, the parties stipulated that defendant met the criteria for sentence reduction under retroactive amendments to the Guidelines for crack cocaine and that the new range was 78-97 months. A probation officer agreed with the recalculation and described defendant's adjustment to incarceration as "fair." He had received average work evaluations and had two incident reports for refusing to obey an order and one for fighting. He had not been disciplined in the past two years and had taken classes. The district court reduced the sentence to 88 months. The Sixth Circuit remanded for a statement of reasons for the change; the court did not abuse its discretion in not holding a hearing.
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