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The "Relevant Conduct Provision" of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines allows uncharged but related criminal conduct to be used to determine your sentencing at a
by gpcz 11y ago
The "Relevant Conduct Provision" of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines allows uncharged but related criminal conduct to be used to determine your sentencing at a standard of the preponderance of the evidence. That means that if you're charged with a bunch of stuff and you plead guilty to one count, all the rest can be used to determine your sentence at a significantly lower standard of evidence.
So while the government didn't have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that his tweets about funding were material support, those tweets could be used to increase his sentence for the Reza Niknejad thing.
- tptacek 11y agoThat's true, and it's disquieting that telling ISIS it needs a better website and asking people to help build it could affect a felony sentence. But you can also look at it the other way around. We're in part disquieted by the Twitter stuff because we (sensibly) believe mere opinions and their expression shouldn't be criminally actionable. But here we have very concrete evidence that these were not mere opinions, but in fact a concerted effort to assist ISIS in a meaningful way.