United States v. Kenny Smart, No. 22-1131 (8th Cir. 2023)
Annotate this Case
A jury convicted Defendant of being a felon in possession of a firearm and possessing a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. The district court denied his motion for a new trial in a thirty-page Order and sentenced Defendant as an armed career criminal to 360 months imprisonment. The court also revoked Defendant’s supervised release and imposed a consecutive fifty-four-month sentence. Defendant appealed his conviction and sentence, arguing there was insufficient evidence to convict him of the firearm offenses; the district court committed evidentiary errors and improperly instructed the jury; the government committed Brady violations; his trial counsel was ineffective; and the district court erred in sentencing him as an armed career criminal and abused its discretion in revoking supervised release.
The Eighth Circuit affirmed the conviction but, based on an intervening armed-career-criminal decision, remanded for resentencing. The court explained that at oral argument, without conceding the merits of these issues, government counsel conceded that United States v. Perez, 46 F.4th 691 (8th Cir. 2022), would require a different outcome and, therefore, the court should remand for further proceedings on whether Defendant was properly sentenced under the ACCA. The court agreed that is the proper course of action. As the district court may decide that the Iowa convictions are no longer proper ACCA predicate offenses, an issue the court did not decide, that would moot the question of whether the Georgia conviction is a qualifying ACCA predicate, absent a second appeal.
Court Description: [Loken, Author, with Gruender and Grasz, Circuit Judges] Criminal case - Criminal law and Sentencing. The evidence was sufficient to support defendant's convictions for being a felon in possession of a firearm and possession of a firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking; no error in admitting evidence of defendant's past convictions for similar conduct; no error in admitting recordings of jail-house calls; no error in granting the government's motion to exclude evidence of two witnesses' prior theft convictions, as theft is not a crime involving dishonesty within the meaning of Rule 609(a)(2); no error in admitting evidence defendant attempted to intimidate a witness on the eve of trial; photo taken at time of defendant's arrest was properly admitted; no error in denying defendant's request for an addict-informer instruction; no error in refusing defendant's request to give a mere presence instruction; Brady claims rejected; ineffective assistance of counsel claims would not be reviewed on direct appeal; remanded for further sentencing proceedings in light of this court's decision in U.S. v. Perez, 46 F.4th 691 (8th Cir. 2022).
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.