Background
Jason Hutchinson pleaded guilty to multiple counts of child sexual exploitation in violation of federal law. The government agreed to cap its sentencing recommendation at four hundred five months, while Hutchinson could request a sentence as low as the statutory minimum of one hundred eighty months. At sentencing, Hutchinson objected to specific paragraphs in the presentence report alleging he had engaged in forcible sexual conduct with a ten-year-old boy. The district court overruled the objection and imposed an aggregate sentence of four hundred fifty months of imprisonment with a lifetime term of supervised release.
The court’s reasoning
The court explained that a district court commits procedural error when it bases a sentence on unproven, disputed allegations rather than facts. While the government did not contest that the allegations were unproven, it argued any error was harmless. The court found the error was not harmless because the disputed allegations described conduct that was arguably more egregious than the underlying convictions and were expressly relied upon by the government to support the requested sentence. The court noted that the district court had several options, including sustaining the objection or ruling that a ruling was unnecessary, but it could not rely on the presentence report as evidence to overrule the objection without supporting proof.
A district court may not rely on objected-to portions of the PSR during sentencing unless the government presents evidence to prove the disputed facts.
United States v. Willis, 168 F.4th 1119, 1122 (8th Cir. 2026)
What it means going forward
Defendants may now have greater protection against the use of unproven allegations in presentence reports that are not supported by evidence presented by the government. Sentencing courts must either sustain objections to disputed facts or explicitly state they will not consider those facts when determining a sentence.