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Seventh Circuit finds that sentencing speed kills procedural reasonableness

By Douglas A. Berman

The Seventh Circuit has an interesting reasonableness ruling today in US v. Glosser, No. 08-4015 (7th Cir. Sept. 29, 2010) (available here), which gets started this way: The government appeals from a 121-month sentence a defendant received for attempting to possess more than 500 grams of methamphetamine, arguing that the district court committed procedural error by announcing and promising that it would impose the mandatory minimum sentence during the change of plea hearing, before it knew the advisory guidelines range or had heard either party?s argument regarding the sentence. Although we recognize that the court?s references to the ten-year mandatory minimum stemmed from a desire to ensure the defendant understood the minimum time he faced (he had previously been incorrectly informed that he faced a statutory minimum of five years), we agree with the government that the premature announcement of sentence constitutes procedural error that requires we vacate the sentence and remand for further proceedings...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on September 29, 2010 (boomark / email).