US Appeals Court finds 60-month sentence for illegal Guyanese excessive

Dec 14, 2017 News

US (www.law.com)- The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Tuesday vacated the sentence of a man who illegally re-entered the United States, finding that the 60 months ordered by U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest of the Southern District of New York was “both procedurally and substantively unreasonable.”

The defendant, Latchman Singh, a Guyanese national who lived most of his life in the United States, appeared to have a long rap sheet that stretched back decades. He had already served time in federal prison, and was removed from the country previously. On August 17, 2015, he was charged for again illegally re-entering the country, to which he pleaded guilty.

Probation officials recommended a federal guidelines-based range of imprisonment from 15 to 21 months. The government agreed. However, at sentencing, Forrest said Singh’s past, his likelihood of again illegally entering the country, and a failure to take responsibility for his actions required her to depart substantially from the suggestion.

Forrest, however, erred in prescribing a major variance from the statistical norms of a re-entrance sentence, as well as in reaching that variance based on a misreading of Singh’s history and court statements, the panel of U.S. Circuit Judges Amalya Kearse, Peter Hall and Denny Chin found.

While he was convicted of numerous offences in the past, six of the eight were over a decade old, the panel noted. None were violent or drug-related. Three were minor enough; they resulted in conditional discharges.

Singh was at a lower criminal history category than 57 percent of other illegal re-entry offenders, and yet was “sentenced to more than three times the national average for all illegal reentry offenders,” according to the panel.

Forrest also got some of the facts of Singh’s history wrong, such as wrongly stating he’d been guilty of two earlier illegal re-entries, when, in fact, it was one, the panel found. Likewise, the panel disagreed with Forrest’s take on Singh’s failure to accept responsibilities for his actions, pointing to language in his letter to the court that the panel said did in fact acknowledge responsibility and wrongdoing.

The panel did, however, decline to reassign the case on remand, finding that Forrest was more than capable of imposing “a sentence that is fair, reasonable, and sufficient but not longer than necessary to meet the goals of justice.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York represented the government, with Assistant U.S. Attorney Dina McLeod on the appeal. A spokesman from the office declined to comment.

Federal Defenders of New York attorney Colleen Cassidy represented Singh on appeal. She could not be reached for comment.

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US Appeals Court finds 60-month sentence for illegal Guyanese excessive

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