The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has affirmed the seven-year-and-one-month sentence imposed by the federal court on a woman who was convicted of possessing \u201cice\u201d with intent to distribute and for violating probation conditions.<\/p>\n
The Ninth Circuit determined that the U.S. District Court for the NMI followed sentencing guidelines and their rationale in running defendant Julita Aldan Sablan\u2019s sentence consecutively, in order to ensure that Sablan was \u201cpunished both for breaching the court\u2019s trust and for the new criminal conduct, as each act is separately and distinctively offensive.\u201d<\/p>\n
The district court properly noted that Sablan had committed the same offense for which she was already on supervised release, according to the Ninth Circuit judges in their decision issued Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The Ninth Circuit judges said that that factor was relevant because a \u201cviolator who, after committing an offense and being placed on supervised release for that offense, again commits a similar offense is not only more likely to continue on that path, but also has demonstrated to the court that the violator has little respect for its command.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe court\u2019s explanation makes clear that it appropriately considered Sablan\u2019s underlying offense in order to calculate the likelihood of recidivism and evaluate the scope of the breach of trust,\u201d the Ninth Circuit judges said.<\/p>\n
In November 2010, U.S. District Court for the NMI designated judge Mark W. Bennett sentenced Sablan to 70 months in prison for possession of \u201cice\u201d with intent to distribute and 15 months for violating supervised release conditions.<\/p>\n
The judge ordered that the sentences will be served consecutively for a total of 85 months (seven years and one month).<\/p>\n
It was Sablan\u2019s third conviction.<\/p>\n
Sablan, through counsel George Anthony Long, appealed to the Ninth Circuit to reverse the sentence.<\/p>\n
In affirming the sentence, the Ninth Circuit judges pointed out that it was substantively reasonable. The Ninth Circuit judges said that Bennett\u2019s decision not to award a larger downward variance based on the alleged failure of the U.S. Probation Office to provide greater rehabilitation assistance does not approach a \u201cclear error of judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Ninth Circuit judges said the application of the career criminal enhancement to Sablan was also reasonable.<\/p>\n
The judges said the career offender enhancement is not reserved for \u201cmajor dealers\u201d and Sablan\u2019s below guideline sentence \u201ccannot be deemed unreasonable when her prior felony offenses bring her within the guidelines as a career offender.\u201d<\/p>\n
Further, the Ninth Circuit judges noted, Bennett did reduce Sablan\u2019s sentence to reflect the unusually low quantity of drugs at issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has affirmed the seven-year-and-one-month sentence imposed by the federal court on a woman who was convicted of possessing \u201cice\u201d with intent to distribute and for violating probation conditions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159345\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}