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Sanchez: Errors in 3559 sentence enhancements

By Tim Cone

In U.S. v. Sanchez, No. 06-15143 (Oct. 30, 2009), the Court affirmed convictions of several defendants relating to the attempted burglary of a marijuana grow-house.The Court rejected defense challenges to the admission of cell phone records, finding them to be reliable business records. The Court also rejected challenges to the use of summaries of this evidence during trial, pointing out that the trial court had instructed the jury that the summaries were not evidence and that the evidence was the call records.Turning to sentencing, on plain error review, the Court vacated sentences based on the federal ?three strikes? law, 18 U.S.C. § 3559(c). As the government conceded, one defendant?s prior drug-trafficking conviction did not qualify as a prior drug trafficking offense for purposes of § 3559 because the drug quantity was unspecified, and § 3559 requires prior convictions of quantities above a specified amount in the cross-referenced federal drug statute...continue to full post

Full post as published by Defense Newsletter Blog on November 03, 2009 (boomark / email).