In U.S. v. Bennett, No. 05-15376 (Dec. 13, 2006), the Court (Black, Hull, Conway b.d.), rejected the defendant’s argument that he was erroneously classified as an armed career criminal.
The Court pointed out that when Bennett pled to guilty to the offense of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, he admitted to having three prior felony burglary convictions, as charged in the indictment. Further, Bennett never objected to the factual allegations in the PSI, which described his prior offenses as burglaries. The Court held that Bennett waived the argument, by failing to raise it earlier, that the probation officer should not have looked to materials outside specific court documents when assessing his prior criminal convictions.
The Court, however, reversed the offense level portion of the sentence. The Court noted that based on the district court’s finding that the possession of the firearm was not connected with a violent felony, the sentence offense level should have been one level lower. Since this would have resulted in a lower sentence guideline range, and since the sentencing court said it wanted to impose a sentence near the low end of the applicable guideline range, the error was "plain." The Court therefore vacated the sentence.
