United States v. Beckles, 565 F.3d 832 (11th Cir. 2009)
The defendant was convicted of being convicted felon in possession of firearm. Even assuming that the district court, in treating defendant’s current offense as a “crime of violence,” committed error that was plain or obvious based on its reliance on the PSI’s characterization of the firearm that defendant was convicted of possessing as “sawed-off shotgun,” the error was not shown to have affected defendant’s substantial rights, and therefore could not be corrected on plain error review, given the complete lack of evidence that the firearm that defendant possessed was not a sawed-off shotgun.
A sentence of 360-months imprisonment imposed on armed career criminal convicted of unlawfully possessing sawed-off shotgun was not unreasonable.
Based on a total offense level of 37 and a criminal history category of VI, the guidelines range was 360 months’ to life imprisonment, including a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years under the statute. The sentence was not unreasonable, though the district court allegedly failed to adequately consider the statutory sentencing and mitigating factors such as defendant’s troubled childhood and drug addiction, where the district court explicitly stated that it had given careful consideration to those statutory factors, and that the sentence imposed was needed to account for the serious nature of the offense and needed to provide deterrence in order to safeguard the community.
Tags: career criminal, crime of violence, deterrence, firearm, mandatory minimum, mitigating factors, National Firearms Act, plain error, PSI, sentence enhancement, Sentencing Guidelines
