Federal appellate judges often refer to their colleagues as “friends” — especially when there’s disagreement on a panel. Three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit used that word last week in — you got it — a sharply divided 2-1 ruling.
Judge Roger Gregory and Senior Judge Andre Davis sided with a man named Deangelo Whiteside, who fought the use of the “career offender enhancement” to boost his prison term for a drug conviction. They concluded that “the erroneous application of the career offender enhancement worked a gross miscarriage of justice.” Gregory and Davis voted to strike Whiteside’s 17.5-year sentence.
