by David Kim

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated the defendant’s sentence and remanded for full resentencing following his guilty plea to illegal receipt of a trafficked firearm, holding that the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut committed plain error by considering a co-defendant’s participation in two prior shootings when imposing an above-Guidelines sentence. The Court reasoned that because no allegation or evidence showed that the defendant and the co-defendant engaged in any joint criminal undertaking or conspiracy, and no evidence showed that the defendant was even aware of the co-defendant’s prior violent conduct, the District Court failed to articulate a proper basis for relying on that conduct under any of the factors enumerated in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). The Court also clarified that a sentencing court’s bare invocation of “context” does not shield reliance on a co-defendant’s violence from appellate review; rather, the court must explain how such conduct properly bears on one or more § 3553(a) factors as they relate to the defendant being sentenced.

Background

The investigation into Chase Dralle arose from a federal inquiry into co-defendant Stefan Bagley, who had purchased approximately 20 firearms over 10 months. In July 2023, Bagley arrived at a hospital in Bridgeport, Connecticut, with a gunshot wound, and surveillance footage linked a passenger of Bagley’s vehicle to a separate shooting. After Bagley’s October 2023 arrest, messages retrieved from his cellphone revealed that approximately two months earlier, he had purchased a pistol for Dralle for $760.

In December 2023, a grand jury returned a 12-count superseding indictment charging Dralle and five co-defendants with various firearms offenses. Dralle was charged in a single count for receipt of a trafficked firearm in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 933(a)(2), (b). He was arrested, released pending trial, and in May 2024 pleaded guilty pursuant to a plea agreement stipulating to an advisory Guidelines range of 12 to 18 months’ imprisonment.

Before sentencing, the U.S. Probation Office petitioned the District Court seeking Dralle’s re-arrest for violating conditions of his pretrial release. The petition summarized a police report describing an altercation at a gas station in Trumbull, Connecticut, on August 5, 2024, in which Dralle allegedly initiated a verbal confrontation with a stranger, spat in the individual’s face, and then joined two companions in assaulting and attempting to rob the complainant. A magistrate judge found probable cause to believe Dralle committed state crimes in connection with the altercation and revoked his bail.

Five days later, the District Court sentenced Dralle to a principal term of 30 months’ imprisonment, double the top of the stipulated Guidelines range, followed by three years of supervised release. In explaining its reasoning, the District Court stated that it was evaluating “the nature and circumstances” of Dralle’s offense “with the greater context of Mr. Bagley’s activities,” including Bagley’s vehicle being involved in “two separate shooting incidents” roughly three months before Dralle purchased the firearm. The District Court also relied heavily on the uncharged Trumbull gas station incident, acknowledging that Dralle was “not being sentenced here for those things” but stating it “can’t ignore that context in assessing what it is you are accused of doing.” Defense counsel did not raise specific procedural objections.

Analysis

Reliance on Co-Defendant
Bagley’s Shootings

The Court first explained the rules governing attribution of another person’s conduct to the defendant. When a sentencing court relies on co-conspirator conduct as relevant conduct, the acts of others must fall within the scope of “jointly undertaken criminal activity,” must further that activity, and must be “reasonably foreseeable [to the defendant] in connection with that criminal activity.” U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3(a)(1)(B); United States v. Johnson, 378 F.3d 230 (2d Cir. 2004). Before holding a defendant accountable for another person’s conduct, a court must find both that the acts fell within the scope of the defendant’s agreement and that they were foreseeable to the defendant. Johnson; see also United States v. Presendieu, 880 F.3d 1228 (11th Cir. 2018).

As the Government conceded at oral argument, no evidence supported the proposition that Dralle and Bagley were co-conspirators, that the shootings occurred as part of any jointly undertaken criminal activity, or that Dralle had any awareness of Bagley’s prior violent conduct. Dralle purchased the firearm from Bagley after those shootings, and the record contained no indication that he knew about them. See United States v. Burnett, 827 F.3d 1108 (D.C. Cir. 2016).

Rather than defend the co-defendant conduct theory on conspiracy or joint-undertaking grounds, the Government argued that the District Court permissibly relied on Bagley’s shootings as “important context in understanding the nature, circumstances, and seriousness” of Dralle’s offense under § 3553(a). The Court acknowledged that a sentencing court may consider a third party’s conduct to the extent it is relevant to the § 3553(a) analysis as it relates to the defendant. However, the Court clarified that “the mere use of the word ‘context’ by a sentencing judge does not insulate a district court’s consideration of a co-defendant’s violent conduct from review where the district court does not connect its consideration of such conduct to one or more Section 3553(a) factors.” The sentencing court must articulate how, notwithstanding the absence of a joint criminal undertaking, the co-defendant’s activities properly bear on one or more sentencing factors as they relate to the defendant before the court. The Court stated that its holding does not mandate ritualistic recitation of each § 3553(a) factor; instead, it requires a sentencing court to sufficiently explain how it properly considered the co-defendant’s violence under those factors, thereby enabling meaningful appellate review and ensuring the defendant receives procedural fairness at sentencing.

Applying this principle, the Court concluded that there was an insufficient evidentiary basis for treating Bagley’s shootings as reflecting on either the nature and circumstances or the seriousness of Dralle’s offense under § 3553(a)(1) and (a)(2)(A). No showing of reasonable foreseeability connected Dralle to the type of violence Bagley had engaged in. The Government confirmed during sentencing that it was not alleging Dralle was involved in any drug or gang activity. No evidence established that Dralle, who had no prior criminal record, purchased the firearm to advance criminal conduct or that he knowingly associated with violent individuals. The District Court identified no other theory under the § 3553(a) factors that would justify treating Bagley’s prior shootings as relevant “context,” according to the Court.

Having found plain error, the Court determined that there was at least a “reasonable probability that, but for the error, the outcome of the [sentencing] would have been different.” Rosales-Mireles v. United States, 585 U.S. 129 (2018). While the Trumbull incident appeared to have carried greater weight in the District Court’s reasoning, the sentencing transcript showed that the court expressly tied its above-Guidelines determination in part to the “greater context of Mr. Bagley’s activities,” establishing a reasonable probability that the improper consideration contributed to the upward variance. Thus, the Court concluded that the error affected Dralle’s substantial rights and undermined the fairness and integrity of the proceedings. Rosales-Mireles.

Uncharged Conduct at the Trumbull Gas Station

Because the co-defendant error independently required a full resentencing, the Court declined to resolve whether the District Court’s treatment of the Trumbull gas station incident separately constituted plain error. However, it observed that the District Court never found the uncharged conduct established by a preponderance of the evidence, never identified the specific information upon which it was relying, and never assessed the reliability of the underlying police report or the Probation Office’s summary of that report. The Court cited the principle, recognized across multiple circuits, that police reports “are not presumed to be categorically reliable” and that individual reports must be evaluated for sufficient indicia of reliability on a case-by-case basis. United States v. Harrison, 809 F.3d 420 (8th Cir. 2015); United States v. Jordan, 742 F.3d 276 (7th Cir. 2014). The Court also rejected the Government’s contention that Dralle’s silence or his counsel’s statements amounted to a concession regarding the alleged conduct, observing that counsel had expressly informed the District Court that Dralle was declining to address the incident on advice of counsel because of potential state prosecution, not because the allegations were uncontested.

For the resentencing, the Court instructed that the District Court must identify any documents or evidence upon which it intends to rely regarding the uncharged conduct, ensure Dralle receives those materials, and, should Dralle raise objections, determine whether the Government’s evidence is sufficiently reliable to satisfy the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard.

Conclusion

Accordingly, the Court vacated the sentence and remanded with instructions for the District Court to conduct a full resentencing. See: United States v. Dralle, 2026 U.S. App. LEXIS 13619 (2d Cir. 2026).  

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