United States v. Finnesy, No. 18-3045, 2020 WL 1314721 (10th Cir. Mar. 20, 2020) (KS)
Defendant absconded from the halfway house and was charged with escape. He pled pursuant to a plea agreement under which the government agreed to recommend concurrent time with defendant’s state sentence and credit for acceptance of responsibility. Before sentencing, defendant had serious disciplinary incidents. At sentencing, the district court concluded the plea agreement was breached and denied the acceptance of responsibility reduction and government did not have to recommend concurrent time.
Defense counsel asked for a low-end sentence and for the federal sentence to run concurrently with the state one. The Government asked for the opposite.

The district court tentatively concluded it would sentence Finnesy at the high-end of the sentencing range and would run his sentence consecutive to the state sentence. Defense counsel objected, saying it was substantively and procedurally unreasonable but couldn’t be specific.

Three issues were raised:

(1) Does the magistrate judge have jurisdiction to hear pleas? Yes.

(2) Did the district court err in failing to apply U.S.S.G. § 5G1.3(b) and running the sentencing concurrently? No “clear and obvious” error here. The objection wasn’t preserved for de novo review because defense counsel’s general request for a concurrent sentence was insufficient.

(3) Did the district court err in denying the acceptance of responsibility reduction based on the government’s refusal to recommend it? Again, Tenth deems there’s no “clear or obvious” error.

Bottom line: Be specific with objections.