The plaintiff and appellee of the case is the United States of America. The defendant and appellant of the case is Douglas Dedeker. The case is being heard in the Eleventh Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals.
Case History
A New York Criminal Lawyer said that on 1990, Douglas Dedeker, the appellant was convicted of helping a federal prisoner escape in the state of Colorado. After the appellant admitted to helping the individual and negotiated his plea of guilty, he was then interviewed by a probation officer who was in charge of preparing his presentencing report. During the meeting with the probation officer the defendant stated that he had not been found guilty of a crime since his initial release in July of 1988. However, the probation officer determined that he had been recently convicted on a shoplifting offense. For this offense he received a 30 day suspension sentence and a $300 fine. At this conviction Dedeker was not represented by a lawyer and received a fine and a suspended sentencing.
When being sentenced for the federal crime, the conviction for shoplifting was not considered when determining the calculation of his criminal history. A New York Criminal Lawyer said the reasoning was that the conviction in the shoplifting case was a misdemeanor and it was an uncounseled conviction. However, based on the defendants failure to disclose information about this crime to his probation officer, his offense level on his criminal history record was raised by two points. This was applied to his sentencing and his category was found to be IV. His range for sentencing was between 24 to 30 months. The defendant received 24 months incarceration. This was the lowest sentence possible based on his point status and the crime that was committed.
Case Discussion
The defendant is appealing his original sentencing, focusing on the requirement that is necessary to enhance a presentence or nondisclosure. A New York Sex Crimes Lawyer said he states that the court submitted the obstruction addition to his sentencing as the withholding of the information about the shoplifting conviction was not meaningful to the case as it would not affect the criminal history category under the current guidelines.
We find that this argument is true as the shoplifting charge would not be included in the calculation of his criminal history as he was not properly represented by a lawyer in the case. However, the case is not about whether or not he committed the crime, but rather whether or not he lied about the charge. His offense level was not increased based on the shoplifting crime, but rather was increased because he failed to acknowledge the offense.
Case Ruling
In this case we find that the district court that ruled in the defendant’s case did not make an error when adding two points to his criminal history point sheet. A New York Drug Possession Lawyer said the main reasoning for this is because the points were not added to his criminal point’s history because of the shoplifting conviction. However, the points were added based on the fact that he did not fully disclose the facts of the case during his probationary hearing for his pretrial criminal point’s history calculation. Had the defendant been honest about this conviction in the initial meeting, these two points would not have been added to his case and he would have been entitled to a lower criminal status.
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