United States v. Smith

Carlton Victor Smith was convicted of bank robbery and sentenced to 405 months in prison following his participation in a scheme that was perpetrated by taking the family of a bank manager hostage and threatening to blow up the bank managers husband with a bomb unless the bank manager retrieved money from a bank vault. This court upheld Smiths conviction and sentence in 2004, but the Supreme Court vacated his sentence in light of United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005). On remand, the district court sentenced him to 396 months in prison. Smith claims that his sentence is procedurally unreasonable because the district court failed to address an argument that Smith made with respect to reducing his Sentencing Guidelines range, and because the district court assertedly disregarded the Sentencing Guidelines and instead relied on the statutory maximum sentences for his crimes. He also argues that his sentence is substantively unreasonable because it is longer than the sentence received by an individual who played an identical role in a related bank robbery in the Eastern District of Tennessee. Because these arguments are without merit, we affirm.