United States v. Rockymore, No. 18-5148 (6th Cir. 2018)
Annotate this CaseA Tennessee sheriff’s deputy noticed a car swerving over the centerline and tried to perform a traffic stop. The car sped away. After a high-speed chase, the car crashed in the woods. Police found Rockymore in the passenger seat, with a loaded firearm on the floorboard in front of him. Rockymore pled guilty as a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition, 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1). He had previous convictions for burglary and three delivery-of-cocaine charges. Rockymore conceded that his burglary conviction counted as a “violent felony” and one of his delivery-of-cocaine charges qualified as “a serious drug offense,” but contended that the other two cocaine convictions did not fall within the definition of a “serious drug offense.” The district court agreed and declined to enhance Rockymore’s sentence under the Armed Career Criminal Act, 18 U.S.C. 924(e)(1). The Sixth Circuit affirmed, noting that an ACCA increases a felon-in-possession’s sentencing range from zero-to-10 years to 15-to-life. Under the ACCA, a “serious drug offense” is any controlled substance conviction for which the maximum term of imprisonment is 10 or more years. The district court properly found that, under Tennessee’s “complicated” sentencing scheme, Rockymore was a Range I offender convicted of two Class C felonies, and faced a six-year-maximum sentence for each.
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