United States v. Pawlak, No. 15-3566 (6th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CasePawlak sold firearms to an undercover officer on four occasions. He pled guilty to four counts of possessing a firearm as a felon, 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1). The court calculated a base offense level of 26 (U.S.S.G. 2K2.1(a)(1)) because the offenses involved a “semiautomatic firearm that is capable of accepting a large capacity magazine,” and Pawlak had two prior “felony convictions of either a crime of violence or a controlled substance offense.” One of Pawlak’s qualifying convictions was an Ohio third-degree burglary offense. Absent that conviction, his base level would have been 22. The court added two levels because Pawlak possessed six firearms and applied a four-level enhancement for trafficking in firearms. After deducting three levels for acceptance of responsibility, Pawlak’s total offense level was 29 with a criminal history category of IV, resulting in a Guidelines range of 121−151 months. The court varied downward by four levels and sentenced Pawlak to 105 months. The Sixth Circuit vacated, holding that the Supreme Court’s 2015 holding in Johnson v. United States, that the Armed Career Criminal Act’s “residual clause” is unconstitutionally vague, compels the same result for an identical “residual clause” in the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. The court expressly overruled its prior decisions as no longer consistent with Supreme Court precedent.
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