BALTIMORE (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced a man already serving time for a state weapons conviction to two more years behind bars.
Hasan Anthony Smith pleaded guilty earlier this year in Baltimore to a state charge of illegal gun possession and received a five-year sentence.
On Tuesday U.S. District Judge Frederick Motz said he had no choice but to sentence Smith for the statutory maximum of two years for a federal violation, which will be served consecutively after Smith completes his state sentence.
Smith pleaded guilty to an illegal gun charge in state court in February after his arrest on New Year’s Eve. Because at the time of his arrest, he was on supervised release from an earlier federal firearm conviction, Smith was found by Motz to be in violation of the terms of his release. The two-year sentence imposed Tuesday stems from this violation.
Smith’s gun-related problems with the law arose in 2010, when, with four prior convictions on unrelated charges in state court, he was arrested on gun charges. Smith pleaded guilty in February 2012 in federal court to being a felon in possession of a firearm and was sentenced to 15 1/2 years.
At the time of sentencing Smith was considered an Armed Career Criminal, a special status imposed on any defendant who has three or more drug or violent crime convictions on his or her record. Armed Career Criminals are subject to harsher sentences, and more jail time.
But using a legal tactic used by defendants facing stiff federal sentences to clear their criminal records of convictions for which they’ve already served jail time, Smith asked a state judge to vacate three of his four prior state court convictions for drug offenses. After the convictions were vacated, Smith was no longer considered an Armed Career Criminal.
Upon appeal, an appellate court ordered Smith to be resentenced. Before imposing a 3 ½-year-sentence in November of 2013, Motz had said he was “starting to worry about” the practice of state judges vacating convictions in order to reduce possible federal sentences.
“It really calls into play the appropriate relationship between state and federal,” he said.
