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Tenth Circuit questions illegal reentry guideline while rejecting substantive unreasonableness claim

By Douglas A. Berman

A helpful reader helped ensure I did not miss the interesting little reasonableness ruling by a Tenth Circuit panel yesterday in US v. Chavez-Suarez, No. 09-1005 (10th Cir. Mar. 8, 2010) (available here). The start of the main opinion in Chavez-Suarez provides a flavor for the issues that the case raises: In this criminal appeal, Defendant Margarito Chavez-Suarez challenges the substantive reasonableness of his sentence. Defendant pled guilty to illegally reentering the country following deportation after a conviction for a drugtrafficking offense.  This drug-trafficking offense ? a 1997 state court conviction for the attempted distribution of marijuana ? resulted in a sixteen-level enhancement to the offense level calculated under the advisory sentencing guidelines...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on March 09, 2010 (boomark / email).