> I believe that all or almost all drug crimes also qualify for the
> enhancement on the grounds that drugs are often accompanied with
> violence. This strikes me as excessive and wrong.
And there's the whacky stuff they can do with criminal history. Here's an example:
>The Lindquist case especially caught my eye because it prompted
>Judge Heaney to write separately to restate his view "that our
>circuit has far too broad a conception of what the guidelines mean
>by stating that violent crimes include conduct that presents a
>serious potential risk of physical injury to another." Here are
>portions of Judge Heaney's noteworthy opinion:
>
>The district court increased Lindquist's base offense level because
>he had prior violent-crime convictions. Those Iowa state court
>convictions resulted from joyriding on an all-terrain vehicle before
>abandoning it in a field (operating a motor vehicle without the
>owner's consent), and waiting in a car while Lindquist's friend
>opened an unlocked pickup truck door and stole its stereo
>(third-degree burglary). It conflicts with the very concept of a
>crime of violence to include these offenses in that category....
>
>The purpose of crimes-of-violence enhancements is to treat violent
>criminal history more seriously than non-violent criminal history.
>It is not hard to conceive scenarios in which non-violent felony
>crimes could become violent, but, in my view, we ought not
>trivialize this guideline section's purpose by expanding the
>category too broadly. Here, the result is that James Lindquist's
>sentence is increased substantially because of the "violent felony"
>of joyriding on a recreational vehicle.
http://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2005/08/crimes_of_viole.html