United States v. Parrish, No. 09-2482-cr (2d Cir. June 24, 2010) (found here)
Parrish violated the terms of his supervised release, for which he faced an advisory Guidelines range of punishment of between 5 and 11 months. The district court, though, sentenced him to 42 months imprisonment. On appeal, that sentence was affirmed.
In particular, the Second Circuit found that "[a]ny severity apparent in Parrish's violation sentence (almost four times the top of the Guidelines range) vanishes when one considers the tremendous leniency of his underlying sentence (barely more than one-eighth of the bottom of the Guidelines range)." The Second Circuit went on to note that:
The Guidelines specifically provide than an upward departure may be warranted in sentencing for a violation of supervised release where a downward departure was granted at the sentencing for the underlying conviction. Where the original downward departure was a major departure, as it was in this case, a district court may well act reasonably when it applies a major upward departure to the defendant who has been shown such leniency and has later breached that trust by violating his supervised release.
Hate to admit it, but it sounds like the right result to me. What do you think?
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