United States v. Regalado

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that “unusual circumstances surrounding application of the crack Guidelines in [this] Circuit after Booker and before Castillo justify a narrow and limited exception to our general rule that sentencing courts are presumed to know and follow the applicable sentencing law”
• observing that “until Kimbrough and Gall, this Circuit tended to discourage district courts from deviating from the crack cocaine Guidelines”
• explaining that it is “beyond any doubt” that an attorney’s “failure to make a meritless argument” cannot “amount to ineffective assistance” (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted)
• explaining that it is “beyond any doubt” that an attorney’s “failure to make a meritless argument” cannot “amount to ineffective assistance” (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted)
• adopting the “Crosby mechanism” in which this Court “remand[s] to give the district court an opportunity to indicate whether it would have imposed a non-Guidelines sentence knowing that it had discretion to deviate from the Guidelines”
• uncertainty whether sentencing judge \understood\ discretion to impose non-Guidelines sentence because of disparity between sentences for cocaine base and cocaine powder offenses

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).