United States v. Lassiter, No. 20-3021 (D.C. Cir. 2021)
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In 2009, defendant was sentenced to 324 months imprisonment after pleading guilty to multiple counts of conviction stemming from his role in a kidnapping and attempted murder. In 2020, following a change in law, the district court set aside one of defendant's judgments and resentenced him to 300 months. On appeal, defendant argued that the judge wrongly treated his original sentence as a sentencing package and misapplied the sentencing guidelines.
The DC Circuit affirmed defendant's sentence, concluding that defendant failed to show that the district judge obviously erred at resentencing by characterizing defendant's original sentence as an aggregate package. The court explained that, to the extent defendant separately argues that the district judge erroneously overlooked defendant's request for a lower sentence reflecting his alleged rehabilitation, the argument runs aground on the record: the district judge did consider defendant's progress before imposing the new sentence. The court also concluded that defendant's challenge to his kidnapping offense level failed where the district judge applied USSG 2A2.1(b)(1)(A), for causing life-threatening bodily injury during an attempted murder, based on the boxcutter slashing, not on the attempted shootings.
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