United States v. Covington

The district judge sentenced the defendant to the bottom of the Guidelines range, 210 months. In so doing, he stated:

When the Sentencing Guidelines were mandatory, we had absolutely no choice except to follow those prior to a year or two ago when they said they were advisory, but they are still given great weight and we are still bound to basically follow them, except in very unusual circumstances, or we just get reversed and you will be back where you were, no matter what I did.

Tr. 14-15. That is not a correct statement of the law as it now stands. For better or worse, district courts are…