United States v. Dautovic, No. 13-1145 (8th Cir. 2014)
Annotate this CaseDefendant, a police officer, was found guilty of willfully depriving another person of the right to be free from the use of unreasonable force and knowingly falsifying a police report with the intent to obstruct justice. The government appealed defendant's sentence of 20 months' imprisonment and defendant cross-appealed. The court concluded that the district court, while finding that defendant's conduct was egregious, imposed a substantively unreasonable sentence in this case where the district court varied downward from the bottom of the Guidelines range by 115 months; the district court's justification for the variance failed to support the degree of the variance in this case; and, therefore, the court vacated and remanded for resentencing. The court denied defendant's cross-appeal where the district court did not err in applying a two-level enhancement for physical restraint nor did the district court err in denying a downward departure for victim provocation.
Court Description: Criminal case - Sentencing. On the government's appeal of defendant's sentence, the district court imposed a substantively unreasonable sentence when it sentenced defendant, a former police officer, to 20 months in prison after he was found guilty of willfully depriving a citizen of the right to be free from unreasonable force and of knowingly falsifying a police report with the intent to obstruct justice; defendant's conduct was egregious and a 115-month variance was not justified on this record; remanded for resentencing. On defendant's cross-appeal, the district court did not err in imposing a two-level enhancement for the use of physical restraint and did not err in denying a downward departure based on defendant's claim of victim provocation.
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