U.S. v. De Luna-Trujillo, LUNA-TRUJILL
| Decision Date | 06 March 1989 |
| Docket Number | LUNA-TRUJILL,D,No. 88-2689,88-2689 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Francisco DEefendant-Appellant. Summary Calendar. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Ruben R. Pena, Weslaco, Tex. (Court-appointed), for defendant-appellant.
Paula Offenhauser, Asst. U.S. Atty., Henry Oncken, U.S. Atty., Houston, Tex., for plaintiff-appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
Before RUBIN, GARWOOD, and DAVIS, Circuit Judges.
The district court imposed on a defendant who had pled guilty to a criminal offense a sentence that was beyond the range generally applicable, as established by the Sentencing Guidelines promulgated by the United States Sentencing Commission. Because the guidelines sanction this departure from the guideline range, we affirm the sentence.
Francisco De Luna-Trujillo pled guilty in 1988 to conspiring to possess 200 pounds of marijuana. Under the guidelines, a defendant's sentence is calculated on a grid based upon his offense level and criminal history category. The district court placed De Luna's offense level at 22, for which the sentence range is 41-105 months of imprisonment depending upon the defendant's criminal history. The court found De Luna's criminal history category to be II because he had been convicted and sentenced to three years imprisonment in 1975 for intending to distribute 1,653 pounds of marijuana. When an offense level of 22 is correlated with a criminal history category of II, the punishment range is 46-57 months. The district court, however, sentenced De Luna to 72 months imprisonment because the criminal history category did not adequately reflect the amount of drugs involved in each offense and did not take into account that the prior conviction was for the same type of offense.
De Luna contends that this upward adjustment is invalid under the guidelines: section 4A1.2(e)(2) permits a court to consider a defendant's criminal history only if the prior sentence was imposed within ten years of the defendant's current offense, and section 4A1.3 permits departure from the applicable sentence range only if the criminal-history category does not adequately reflect the seriousness of the defendant's past criminal conduct or if there is a likelihood that the defendant will commit other crimes.
Section 4A1.2(e) sets out the applicable time period a court can consider when computing a defendant's criminal history.
(1) Any prior sentence of imprisonment exceeding one year and one month that
was imposed within fifteen years of the defendant's commencement of the instant offense is counted....
(2) Any other prior sentence that was imposed within ten years of the defendant's commencement of the instant offense is counted.
(3) Any prior sentences not within the time periods specified above is not counted.
De Luna's prior sentence exceeded 13 months and occurred within the 15-year period. It was appropriate, therefore, for the court to consider this prior conviction when determining his criminal-history category.
When computing a defendant's criminal-history category, section 4A1.2 does not distinguish between the variety of offenses that may have occasioned a 13-month sentence within the past 15 years. The sentencing table, therefore, takes little account of either the nature and magnitude of the past offense, or its relationship to the current crime. The absence of any connection between the past and current offenses, other than a certain temporal contiguity, is remedied by section 4A1.3, which provides the sentencing judge with discretion to
impos[e] a sentence departing from the otherwise applicable guideline range.... [i]f reliable information indicates that the criminal history category does not adequately reflect the seriousness of the defendant's past criminal conduct or the likelihood that the defendant will commit other crimes.... Such information may include, but is not limited to, information concerning: ...
(c) prior similar misconduct established by a civil adjudication....
(e) prior similar adult criminal conduct not resulting in a criminal conviction.
When it departed from the sentence range established by the guidelines, the district court stated that...
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