United States v. Martinez-Lopez

The Ninth Circuit took this case en banc to revisit the divisibility of California drug statutes. Defendant was convicted of illegal reentry following deportation in violation of 8 U.S.C. 1326. The en banc court held that California Health and Safety Code 11352 is divisible with regard to both its controlled substance requirement and its actus reus requirement. Therefore, the district court properly applied the modified categorical approach and correctly found that defendant pled guilty to selling cocaine, which qualified as a drug trafficking offense under the federal sentencing guidelines and subjected defendant to a 16-level enhancement to his base offense level. Furthermore, the 77-month sentence, based on a properly calculated guidelines range of 70 to 87 months, was substantively reasonable. View "United States v. Martinez-Lopez" on Justia Law