A sad example of sentencing sloppiness

Perhaps I am always charged up about sentencing realities because I sometimes find cases in which simple sloppiness can almost cost a person years of their life.  A prime example comes from a summary order in the (unpublished) Second Circuit ruling in US v. Day, No. 05-4283 (2d Cir. Oct. 10, 2006) (available here). 

In Day, the Second Circuit reverses a 15-year sentence because “the District Court erred in (1) misreading the relevant statute to require that the mandatory minimum sentence it imposed for each count be served consecutively …, and (2) not making findings in support of its decision that Day did not qualify for safety valve relief.”  At the initial sentencing, the defendant in this case might have received a 10-year (or even shorter) sentence had the district judge not been led astray by a pre-sentence report that wrongly indicated that two sentences had to be served consecutively.