United States v. Keys, No. 14-2397 (8th Cir. 2015)
Annotate this CaseIn 2005, Iowa prosecutors convicted Keys of delivering cocaine and possessing cocaine with intent to deliver. Keys received a suspended sentence of ten years. Keys was convicted in 2008 of possessing cocaine with intent to deliver as a result of events on February 27, 2008, and was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. Keys’s third drug conviction occurred in 2009, when he was convicted of delivering cocaine in 2007 and 2008, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Keys was paroled on April 30, 2012. Almost immediately upon his release, Keys resumed supplying cocaine to several individuals, using the same accomplices and modus operandi as before his imprisonment. After law enforcement conducted a series of controlled buys, a federal grand jury indicted Keys, who pled guilty to conspiracy to distribute a substance containing cocaine, 21 U.S.C. 841(a)(1), (b)(1)(B), and 846. The district court determined Keys was a career offender and sentenced him to 151 months imprisonment. The Eighth Circuit affirmed the sentence as substantively reasonable. Keys’s 2008 and 2009 convictions were not relevant conduct to the 2012 offense and, therefore, count under the career offender provision.
Court Description: Riley, Author, with Loken and Shepherd, Circuit Judges] Criminal case - Sentencing. The district court did not err in finding defendant was a career offender as the previous convictions the government relied upon were not relevant conduct under Application Note 8 to Guidelines Section 1B1.3 and were properly counted as prior convictions; the sentence imposed was not substantively unreasonable.
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