Published on: Thursday, January 18, 2018

On January 10, 2018, the United States Sentencing Commission published Volume I, Issue 4 of its Case Law Quarterly . The installment covers October-December 2017 and provides brief summaries of select appellate court decisions issued that involve the guidelines and other aspects of federal sentencing.  It’s not intended to be comprehensive, but rather focuses on “selected sentencing topics that may be of current interest.”  For example, the Quarterly reported that in United States v. Davis, 875 U.S. 592 (11th Cir. Nov. 7, 2017), the Eleventh Circuit vacated and remanded a defendant’s 188-month sentence for being a felon in possession of a firearm, holding that his prior state conviction in Alabama for first-degree sexual abuse did not qualify as a “violent felony” and enhanced sentence under the Armed Career Criminal Act.

Past issues of the Case Law Quarterly are available from the Sentencing Commimssion’s website here.  The Training Division provides sentencing resource materials that will help you argue for the best sentence for your clients here.