More on Booker from the 8th Circuit

The Eighth Circuit won the award last week through its ruling in Coffey (details here) for being the first to circuit court to issue a consequential Booker ruling.  That court puts forth its second notable Booker decision today with US v. Parsons, No. 04-2246 (8th Cir. Jan. 28, 2005) (available here).

In Parsons, the court rejects an effort to seek resentencing in a plea case which included admissions of certain guideline facts.  The defendant after Blakely claimed that he “would never have admitted to the amount of loss attributable to his conduct as stated in his plea agreement if he had known that these factors had to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.”  Here’s the court’s analysis:

Because Parsons admitted as part of his plea agreement that the amount of loss attributable to him was between $1.5 million and $2.5 million, requiring a 12-level enhancement, that enhancement of his sentence does not violate United States v. Booker, Nos. 04-104/105, 2005 WL 50108 (U.S. Jan. 12, 2005)….

Finally, there would be no merit to an argument that Parsons is entitled to resentencing under advisory Guidelines in light of Booker.  He expressly agreed as part of his plea agreement that he would be sentenced under the Guidelines, that his base offense level would be 6, that he would receive the 12-level amount-of-loss enhancement, that he would receive a 2-level enhancement for more than minimal planning, and that his resulting Guidelines imprisonment range could be as high as 30-37 months. The district court applied the agreed-upon range of 30-37 months in sentencing Parsons to 30 months in prison.