In a precedential opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit vacated a convicted drug dealer’s 220-month prison term and remanded the defendant back to federal court for a likely harsher sentence. The court overturned the sentence when it held the trial judge deviated from the federal guidelines when calculating the defendant’s incarceration.
“By selecting a guideline that was not referenced in [the federal sentencing guidelines'] Appendix A for the offense of conviction, the district court violated the precise, mechanical process required by the guidelines manual,” said Judge D. Brooks Smith in United States v. Boney.
