United States v. Whitson, No. 22-5462 (6th Cir. 2023)
Annotate this Case
In 2011, Whitson participated in two Hobbs Act robberies. Both had victims who were threatened and physically injured; one was shot. Whitson was convicted of eight crimes at trial and sentenced to 1,252 months of incarceration. After several appeals, through which four of his convictions were vacated, he was resentenced in 2022 to 360 months of incarceration. Whitson argued that his sentence was procedurally and substantively unreasonable because the district court speculated that Whitson’s difficult upbringing made him more likely to re-offend, in spite of evidence to the contrary; failed to make an “individualized assessment” of Whitson’s background; impermissibly required Whitson to admit his guilt in order to consider fully evidence of his rehabilitation while incarcerated; and did not properly weigh the evidence of his rehabilitation.
The Sixth Circuit vacated. The district court committed plain error by requiring Whitson to admit his guilt in order to consider fully the evidence of his rehabilitation. “There is a fine line between consideration of a defendant’s acceptance of responsibility as relevant to [section] 3553 and penalizing a defendant for maintaining their right to avoid self-incrimination, and in this case, the district court fell on the wrong side of that line.”
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.