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''Gall v. United States'', 552 U.S. 38 (2007), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court, which held that the federal appeals courts may not presume that a sentence falling outside the range recommended by the Federal Sentencing Guidelines is unreasonable. Applying this rule to the case at hand, it upheld a sentence of 36 months' probation imposed on a man who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute ecstasy in the face of a recommended sentence of 30 to 37 months in prison. ==Facts== Brian Gall was a sophomore at the University of Iowa when he befriended Luke Rinderknecht, who got Gall into selling ecstasy. Over the course of seven months, Gall made over $30,000 selling the drug. Then he stopped using ecstasy, graduated from college, moved to Arizona, got a job in the construction industry, and then became a master carpenter in Colorado. He had not used any illegal drugs since graduating from college. While Gall was living in Arizona, federal agents approached him as part of an investigation into the drug conspiracy. He admitted participating in it for a brief time, and the agents moved on with their investigation. A year and a half after the agents approached Gall, Gall was indicted as part of an ongoing drug distributing ring that lasted from 1996 until 2002. By this time, Gall had been away from the drug ring for over three years. When the indictment came down, Gall returned to Iowa, surrendered to authorities, and was released on his own recognizance pending trial. While awaiting trial, Gall began his own contracting business, making profits of $2,000 per month in his first year. Gall was represented by attorney Marc Milavitz from Boulder, Colorado. Gall struck a plea bargain with the Government, stipulating that he was responsible for the equivalent under the federal sentencing guidelines of 87.5 kilograms of marijuana. (This was relevant for sentencing purposes.) The Government acknowledged that Gall had withdrawn from the conspiracy in September 2000. The probation office also concluded (again, for sentencing purposes) that Gall was never an organizer or leader in the conspiracy, that his offense did not involve the use of weapons, and that he had no significant criminal history. The probation office's report also pointed out that Gall had always been candid with the Government, but that his information was not useful to the investigators. Ultimately the probation office recommended a sentence of 30 to 37 months. At the sentencing hearing, several witnesses testified to Gall's good character. The defense reminded the court that two of Gall's accused codefendants had been sentenced to 30 and 35 months, respectively, and neither of them had voluntarily withdrawn from the conspiracy as Gall had. Although the Government's attorney urged the court to impose a sentence within the range recommended by the probation office, U.S. District Judge Robert W. Pratt ultimately imposed a sentence of 36 months' probation, explaining that it had considered the purposes of punishment and how a probation-only sentence would further those goals. The Government then appealed the sentence. The Eighth Circuit vacated and remanded the sentence. As circuit precedent required at the time, the court noted that the district court had not justified the sentence adequately in light of the proportional variation from the bottom end of the Guidelines range. Because Gall's probation-only sentence was, in effect, a 100% downward variation from the Guidelines range, the court reasoned, it had to be justified by extraordinary circumstances, circumstances that were not present in Gall's case. After ''Claiborne v. United States'' terminated with the unexpected premature death of the defendant in that case, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Gall's case in order to clarify how the lower federal courts should handle sentences falling outside the Guidelines range. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Gall v. United States」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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