United States v. Smith

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions of an individual who pleaded guilty to two counts of destruction of an energy facility but vacated his sentence and remanded for resentencing, finding that there was procedural error in determining the advisory sentencing guideline range. The defendant’s guilty plea followed incidents when shots were fired into electrical substations in North Dakota and South Dakota in 2023 and 2022; the district court sentenced him to 150 months’ imprisonment on each count, to be served consecutively. The Eighth Circuit ruled that the district court properly rejected a motion to suppress evidence and found that the defendant did not establish a breach of the plea agreement. The Eighth Circuit concluded, however, that the evidence did not support the district court’s finding that the defendant acted with “a terrorist motive … to intimidate or coerce a civilian population,” which resulted in the upward departure in the advisory sentencing guideline range. The Eighth Circuit wrote that “[e]fforts to intimidate or coerce an energy company may ultimately affect a civilian population, but they are not the same as efforts to intimidate or coerce the civilian population itself.” The Eighth Circuit also noted that the government had suggested that the defendant “hoped for others to ‘rise up’ and join his climate activism,” but the Eighth Circuit concluded that “a motive to recruit followers is not a motive to intimidate or coerce.” The Eighth Circuit noted that there was no threat to commit violence against a civilian population and that it was “undisputed” that the defendant targeted substations “in remote, unpopulated areas during the middle of the night when there were no people around.” The court found that it would “stretch” the language “beyond its natural meaning to accept on this record that [the defendant’s] motive was ‘to intimidate or coerce a civilian population’” and therefore concluded there was error in calculating the advisory guideline range.