United States v. McLean

MEMORANDUM OPINION

McHugh, District Judge

The latitude given to federal authorities in charging drug offenses has been described as creating a “terrifying capacity for escalation of a defendant’s sentence.”1 This case exemplifies that reality, as a defendant caught by an undercover “sting” operation faces a Guideline sentence of 35 years to life imprisonment, with a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years, because of a professed willingness to rob a drug stash house that was invented entirely by Government agents, containing a fictional amount of drugs chosen by those agents. At sentencing,…