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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. ZACHARIAH POLIHONKI, Defendant-Appellant. |
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Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Michigan at Grand Rapids.
No. 05-00077—Robert Holmes Bell, Chief District Judge.
Submitted: September 15, 2008
Decided and Filed: September 24, 2008
Before: GILMAN, KETHLEDGE, and ALARCÓN, Circuit Judges.
RONALD LEE GILMAN, Circuit Judge. Zachariah Polihonki pled guilty in 2005 to federal conspiracy charges involving cocaine. He was subsequently sentenced to 18 months in prison, to be followed by 3 years of supervised release. After serving his prison sentence, Polihonki was twice reported for violating the conditions of his supervised release. On the second occasion, the district court revoked his supervised release and sentenced him to 6 months in prison, to be followed by a new supervised-release term of 30 months.
Polihonki served the 6-month prison term and, in July of 2007, began his second term of supervised release. But he violated its conditions twice within 2 months after the term had commenced, causing the district court to once again revoke his supervised release. This time Polihonki was sentenced to 13 months in prison, a term that is 2 months longer than the applicable U.S. Sentencing Guidelines range of 5 to 11 months’ imprisonment. Polihonki argues on appeal that the sentence is both procedurally and substantively unreasonable. For the reasons set forth below, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.
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DIAPOLIS SMITH, Petitioner-Appellant, v. MARY BERGHUIS, Warden, Respondent-Appellee. |
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Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Michigan at Grand Rapids.
No. 03-00087—Gordon J. Quist, District Judge.
Argued: April 23, 2008
Decided and Filed: September 24, 2008
Before: MOORE and CLAY, Circuit Judges; SCHWARZER, Senior District Judge.
CLAY, Circuit Judge. Petitioner, Diapolis Smith, was convicted of second degree murder and felony possession of a firearm and sentenced to life imprisonment in a Michigan state court. After exhausting his state court remedies, Petitioner filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 in the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan, which was denied. Petitioner now appeals from the order entered by the district court denying his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Specifically, Petitioner contends that he was denied an impartial jury drawn from a fair cross-section of the community in violation of the Sixth Amendment and that he received ineffective assistance of counsel at trial and during sentencing. We find that Petitioner has demonstrated a violation of his Sixth Amendment right to a jury drawn from a fair cross-section of the community and therefore we need not address his ineffective assistance of counsel claims. For the reasons that follow, we REVERSE the judgment of the district court with respect to Petitioner’s Sixth Amendment claim that his jury was not drawn from a fair cross-section of the community and REMAND the case with instructions that the district court order Smith’s release from state custody unless the state of Michigan commences a new trial within 180 days of this order.