Wire
Fourth Circuit keeps Jaron Starkey’s 25-year sentence
The Fourth Circuit said Jaron Starkey’s 2012 and 2019 Delaware convictions still count as career-offender predicates under the federal sentencing guidelines.
Jaron Starkey will keep serving 300 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to a drug-trafficking crime. A Fourth Circuit panel in Richmond said on May 22 that his sentence stays put because two earlier Delaware drug convictions still count under the federal career-offender rules.
That mattered because the enhancement under U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1 can push a sentence much higher when a defendant has the right kind of prior state convictions.
Why the prior cases still counted
The dispute came down to whether Starkey’s Delaware convictions were the kind of controlled-substance offenses the sentencing guidelines recognize. He argued they were too broad because Delaware drug law, in his view, swept in attempted distribution.
The panel rejected that reading. It said the enhancement rested on two Delaware felony drug-distribution convictions, one from 2012 and one from 2019, under statutes that punish manufacturing, delivering, or possessing with intent to manufacture or deliver illegal drugs. Delaware’s separate attempt law, the court said, does not turn those convictions into attempt crimes.
What the label does to a sentence
Career-offender status is one of the sentencing tools that can change a case dramatically without changing the underlying conviction. Once it applies, the guideline range rises fast, and the judge starts from a much tougher place.
For Starkey, the result is simple. The published opinion leaves the 25-year sentence in place and closes off the challenge to the enhancement for now.