United States v. Jose Torres

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
• Decided: December 5, 2024
• Docket: 23-3313
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

United States Court of Appeals For the Eighth Circuit ___________________________

No. 23-3313 ___________________________

United States of America

Plaintiff - Appellee

v.

Jose Luis Torres

Defendant - Appellant ____________

Appeal from United States District Court for the Southern District of Iowa - Eastern ____________

Submitted: September 23, 2024 Filed: December 5, 2024 [Unpublished] ____________

Before SMITH, ERICKSON, and STRAS, Circuit Judges. ____________

PER CURIAM.

Jose Torres, who pleaded guilty to two counts of cocaine distribution, see 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), (b)(1)(C), argues that the district court 1 miscalculated the drug weight at sentencing. Any error, however, was harmless, so we affirm.

1 The Honorable Stephen H. Locher, United States District Judge for the Southern District of Iowa. The presentence investigation report, which the district court adopted, estimated that the combined drug weight from multiple deliveries of cocaine was just over 35 kilograms. See U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1(c). Torres challenged almost all of it, except for the 112 grams that supported his guilty plea. Concluding that the remaining drugs were part of the “same course of conduct or common scheme or plan” as the deliveries he admitted to making, the court overruled his objections. U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3(a)(2).

It then went a step further by explaining why it would have imposed a 200- month sentence “either way.” It made clear that, even if the disputed drug transactions had been excluded, it still would have “varied upward” and ended up in the same place. In its view, “the sentence” it ultimately selected was “sufficient but not greater than necessary to satisfy [the statutory sentencing factors].” Given these statements, we can safely conclude that a lower drug weight would not have resulted in a lower sentence. See United States v. Holmes, 87 F.4th 910, 914 (8th Cir. 2023) (explaining when an error is harmless). We accordingly affirm the judgment of the district court. ______________________________

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