US v. Moore, No. 09-3309

Crack Sentence Affirmed

In US v. Moore, No. 09-3309, the court affirmed defendant's sentence for possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine, holding that 1) while Kimbrough permitted district courts to disagree with and vary from the amended crack cocaine guidelines, it did not require them to do so; 2) the district court's rejection of defendant's personal use testimony was not clearly erroneous; and 3) lying to obtain a lighter sentence was obstruction of justice under U.S.S.G. section 3C1.1, and the district court's finding that defendant lied must be accepted unless clearly erroneous.

As the court wrote:  "While on supervised release for a prior drug conviction, James Eric Moore sold crack cocaine to a confidential informant. A jury found Moore guilty of possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and (b)(1)(C); the district court sentenced him to 188 months in prison. In a separate proceeding, the court also found that Moore violated the terms of his supervised release, granted the government's petition to revoke, and imposed a consecutive 24-month sentence for that violation."

Related Resources

• Read the Eighth Circuit's Decision in US v. Moore, No. 09-3309