United States v. Robinson, No. 15-2019 (7th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CaseRobinson’s cousin, Carter, led a heroin trafficking ring, buying heroin in Chicago and selling it in Milwaukee, 2012-2014. For two months in 2014, Carter brought Robinson into the operation, just as law enforcement was closing in. Robinson sold heroin to a confidential informant. Police arrested him, Carter, and others. Robinson ultimately pleaded guilty to two counts of traveling in interstate commerce to facilitate heroin distribution, 18 U.S.C. 1952(a)(3), and was given within-guidelines sentence of 84 months’ imprisonment. Before imposing the sentence the court engaged in several wide-ranging soliloquies on urban decay, the changing nature of Robinson’s neighborhood, the “pathology” of certain neighborhoods, and the connection between Milwaukee’s 1967 riots and recent protests in Baltimore, Maryland. The judge included several comments about his own experiences of the neighborhood. The Seventh Circuit vacated the sentence, stating that the comments during sentencing strayed so far from the record that it could not trace the legitimate reasons for Robinson’s sentence.
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