Career Offender Status in a Federal
This issue comes up a lot in federal crimes. It usually involves significant drug cases where the government, the court, and the probation department play a crucial role in classifying individuals as career offenders.
A “career offender” is a special designation used in United States Sentencing Guidelines for specific convicted defendants, such as:
- You must be at least 18 years old at the time the offense was committed;
- You must be convicted of a felony drug crime or a felony crime of violence and
- You must have two prior felony drug or crime of violence convictions.
That obviously raises the stakes regarding how much federal custody time you're facing. One thing it does is it triggers you to be in the criminal history category IV, which is the highest category. This determination is based on the severity and frequency of your past criminal activities.
Suppose you look at the federal sentencing guidelines; that puts you in a tricky predicament. You would look at your base offense level, which is the starting point for calculating the severity of your offense, and enhancements, which are additional penalties the government attaches based on specific circumstances of your case.
Then you take off acceptance or responsibility if you're going to work out a deal with the government and anything else that is applicable, which will put you in a guideline range.
Mandatory Minimums in Federal Sentencing
The problem is, if you look at a guideline range for a criminal history I versus a criminal history IV, there's a big difference between those two.
So, that's one significant ramification of being determined to be a career offender in a federal criminal case. Also, you're looking at mandatory minimums, whether a 10-year mandatory minimum or a 20-year mandatory minimum.
Nobody wants to be put in federal prison, and when you start to look at these minimum sentences. They are huge sentences, and when you're staring down 20 years at 85% because of the charge you're charged with, combined with the fact that you are a career offender, that puts you in a difficult position.
Challenging Career Offender Status
We try to figure out ways that you don't have to do these 10, 20-year, or more sentences because you're a career offender. One of the ways that we attack this is to try to make the argument that you're not a career offender.
We can argue that just because you have a couple of convictions in the past doesn't make you a career offender based on the federal sentencing guidelines.
We will try to argue that whatever the government or the probation department is saying overstates what your actual criminal history looks like.
So, I will need to sit down with you and get information about what's happened in the past, how many convictions you have, and what the convictions are.
Here are the requirements, and they're pretty basic, to be determined to be a career offender:
- Number one is that your current charge is typically going to be some drug offense — some sort of possession for sales or sales of a large amount of drugs, which triggers the feds to become involved with your case. That would be requirement number one when it comes to these federal drug charges where people are looking at a lot of time because they're being classified as career offenders.
- The second requirement is you're going to need to have two convictions either at the state or federal level for serious drug crimes like sales, possession for sales, or some violent felonies at the state or federal level, which I see once in a while. However, it's usually when they're grabbing people who are involved with drugs, RICO, or whatever the case may be. These people have prior drug convictions — that's usually what's triggering this career-offender situation.
For example, let's say in the year 2015, you were convicted of sales of drugs at the state level. You caught some time for it — whether county jail or prison, you served your time, and you're done.
And then, let's say, a couple of years later, you picked up another sales case, got convicted, served your time, and you're done. Now, your latest case is a new federal case.
It's a big drug case. You're being charged with a large quantity of some drug, which triggers a 10-year mandatory minimum, for example, and you have those two prior convictions, you're going to be considered a career offender, and you're going to be looking at a lot of time in federal prison.
Federal Criminal Defense Lawyer
So, you're going to want to get an attorney who has dealt with these types of cases before and who has experience with them:
- who knows what the mitigating factors are related to these types of offenses and
- who knows what circumstances can be argued to avoid a huge federal criminal sentence?
Another way to navigate the career offender classification is to fight the case. Winning a jury trial or being found not guilty can completely change the trajectory of your case, eliminating the need to worry about the career offender status.
Unfortunately, many people don't have that option if the government has evidence against them. The type of evidence they will have is that sometimes, people sell to an undercover agent or someone working for the government; that would be one way to catch somebody.
Another way is they get phone conversations. They get a wiretap warrant signed by a judge, and then they listen to conversations, they grab drugs, they hold people, they arrest them, they charge them, they indict them, and now you're caught up in a federal case. There are all sorts of ways they can prove these cases.
So, if you or a loved one has a federal criminal case, you're looking at a lot of time in custody because it's a drug case and because your significant other is being viewed as a career offender, pick up the phone. Ask to speak to Ron Hedding. I stand ready to help you.
Hedding Law Firm is a criminal defense law firm in Los Angeles County at 16000 Ventura Blvd #1208 Encino, CA 91436. Contact us for a free case evaluation at (213) 542-0979.
