United States v. Craig Randolph Pearson

OVERVIEW

Craig Randolph Pearson appeals the district court’s upward departure from the Sentencing Guidelines following his conviction on eight counts of bank robbery and attempted bank robbery. Pearson contends that the district court’s departure was impermissible; even if departure was permissible, the amount was unreasonable; and the departure violated his due process rights. We hold that the departure was permissible, but because we find the amount of departure unreasonable, we remand to the district court for resentencing. Any departure should be guided by analogy to the guidelines.

FACTS

On November 22, 1988, Pearson pled guilty to eight counts of bank robbery and attempted bank robbery under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2113 (a) and (d). Pearson admitted that he wrote a demand note for each robbery, and he believed that in each note he claimed to have a gun. He denied, however, that he actually had used or possessed a gun. The government struck any allegations that Pearson was armed from the indictment before Pearson entered his guilty plea.

The district court adopted the offense level computation in the presentence report, calculating Pearson’s sentence as follows. Under the version of…