United States v. Smith

GORSUCH, Circuit Judge.

Must a sentencing court studiously ignore one of the most conspicuous facts about a defendant when deciding how long he should spend in prison? After a court sentences a man to many decades in prison for using a gun during a crime of violence, must the court pretend the gun sentence doesn’t exist when weighing an appropriate prison term for the underlying crime of violence?

That’s the blinkered view the government persuaded the district court to adopt in this case. No one doubts that Joshua Smith deserves a long prison sentence. He robbed two stores and shot the managers…