U.S. Sentencing Commission Votes Unanimously to Restrict Use of Acquitted Conduct at Sentencing
by Sam Rutherford
On April 17, 2024, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted unanimously to limit consideration of conduct for which a person was acquitted in federal court from being used in calculating the sentence range under the federal guidelines for a related conviction.
The U.S. Sentencing Commission Guidelines Manual (“USSG”) does not specifically state whether a federal district court may consider conduct for which a defendant has been acquitted when sentencing on related offenses for which he or she has been convicted. However, in United States v. Watts, 519 U.S. 148 (1997), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the USSG does “not prevent the sentencing court from considering conduct underlying the acquitted charge, so long as that conduct has been proved by a preponderance of the evidence.” This practice is known as acquitted-conduct sentencing.
The Court determined that acquitted-conduct sentencing is permitted under several sections of the USSG. Specifically, Section 1B1.3 instructs district courts to consider “all acts and omissions committed, aided, abetted, counseled, commanded, induced, procured, or willfully caused by the defendant” that “occurred during the commission of the offense of conviction, in preparation for that offense, or in the course of attempting to avoid ...
