United States v. James Ralph Long

ALVIN B. RUBIN, Circuit Judge:

The defendant was convicted of a crime for which life imprisonment was mandatory. The term of a sentence, however, is not the only decision to be made in sentencing a person convicted of crime. Because the trial judge sentenced the defendant to a term of life imprisonment without, as Fed.R. Crim.P. 32 requires, either obtaining a pre-sentence report or finding that there was sufficient information in the record to enable the meaningful exercise of sentencing discretion, we vacate the sentence and remand for resentencing.

After a three-day trial, a jury found James…