United States v. Denard Neal

A defendant violates 18 U.S.C. § 1521 when the defendant files, attempts to file, or conspires to file a false document of the sort regularly used to create liens or encumbrances against the real or personal property of a United States officer or employee. The prohibition is triggered by filing, attempting to file, or conspiring to file a false or fictitious lien, whether or not the described collateral sought to be liened or encumbered in the document is in fact real or personal property.

Additionally, we find the district court did not commit plain error in (a) allowing Defendant-Appellant Denard Neal to represent himself throughout these proceedings; (b) applying the two-level enhancement described in United States Sentencing Guidelines Manual (“USSG”) § 2A6.1(b)(2)(B) to Neal’s sentence; and (c) imposing 87-months’ imprisonment on each of the fourteen counts (to be served concurrently with each other, but consecutively to any unserved prior term of imprisonment), though the presentence report inaccurately described the length of Neal’s prior sentences.

A. Background

In 2010, Neal was serving a sentence for armed robbery in the United States Penitentiary, Atwater…