United States v. Poke, No. 14-2331 (7th Cir. 2015)
Annotate this CaseDefendant, age 35, was sentenced to 420 months in prison for possessing 1.2 grams of crack cocaine with intent to sell; possessing a gun as a felon; and using the gun in furtherance of a drug-trafficking offense, 21 U.S.C. 841(a)(1); 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1), 924(c)(1)(A), (e)(1). He was a career offender, with two previous drug offenses. The statutory minimum sentence for all his offenses combined was 20 years: 15 years for being a felon in possession and 5 years for carrying a firearm in furtherance of a felony. There is no minimum statutory sentence for possession of 1.2 grams of crack with intent to sell, but the firearm-in-furtherance sentence was required to be consecutive to the sentence imposed on any other count. His guidelines sentencing range was 360 months to life; had he not been a career offender, it would have been 160 to 185 months. The Seventh Circuit vacated, stating that the judge may have thought he was imposing a bottom-of-the-range sentence, but could have imposed a sentence of 360 months by apportioning 60 months to the gun-in-furtherance count and the remaining 300 to the drug and felon-in-possession counts. The judge also failed to justify nonmandatory conditions of supervised release under the sentencing factors in 18 U.S.C. 3553(a).
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