Background
The defendant pleaded guilty to conspiring to transport illegal aliens. A Presentence Report applied a two-level enhancement under the Sentencing Guidelines because the aliens were allegedly extorted to continue staying at a stash house. The district court adopted this enhancement and sentenced the defendant to twelve months imprisonment.
The court’s reasoning
The court held that the term involuntarily detained means a person is held or confined against their will. The record showed the aliens paid to continue their stay but did not show they were required to pay to leave. Therefore, the enhancement did not apply. The court further found the error was not harmless because the district court imposed a sentence at the bottom of the incorrect Guidelines range without convincing evidence that it would have imposed the same sentence for the same reasons absent the error.
What it means going forward
Defendants in similar smuggling cases involving stash houses must now demonstrate that aliens were held against their will to trigger the involuntary detention enhancement. Sentencing courts must provide independent evidence that a sentence would remain the same if the Guidelines calculation were corrected.