United States v. Doyle

The low-end exception to a presumption of prejudice no longer applies in the post-Booker, advisory guidelines era where a sentence outside the guidelines range is not the extraordinary event that it once was. In this case, the district court's failure to address defendant personally about whether he wished to make a statement to the court was error; defendant was entitled to a presumption of prejudice; the district court could have varied downward from the sentence it imposed if convinced by defendant during allocation to do so; and thus the court vacated and remanded for resentencing so that defendant may have an opportunity to allocute. View "United States v. Doyle" on Justia Law