Three notable sentencing opinions from the Eighth Circuit

While I was busy teaching this morning, the Eighth Circuit handed down a notable set of published sentencing opinions  Here is the unofficial summaries of the rulings (with links) from the Eighth Circuit's website:

United States v. Earl Foy, Jr., No. 09-3027 (available here):

Record shows defendant was aware of the possible range of sentences he could receive, including the possibility of consecutive sentences, and any Rule 11 violation was unlikely to have impacted his decision to plead guilty; a defendant does not have the right to know his actual sentence before pleading guilty; district court gave defendant adequate notice of its intent to apply an upward variance; district court recognized that the variance from the top of the Guidelines range was substantial and it outlined all of the 3553(a) factors that drove its decision; sentence was procedurally sound and substantively reasonable, and the sentence is affirmed. Judge Bright, dissenting.

United States v. Velma Mireles, No. 09-3267 (available here):

Defendant failed to show court's failure to determine whether the guidelines permitted a traditional departure before sentencing was plain error as the court would have been justified in imposing the same sentence under the traditional departure analysis; district court did not err in basing its sentence on a finding that the conduct was related to drug trafficking. Judge Bye, dissenting.

United States v. Douglas Dvorak, No. 09-3463 (available here):

Evidence was sufficient to support defendant's conviction for money laundering as the government proved defendant withdrew money with the intent of concealing the location of his fraudulently-obtained funds; the interrogatories submitted to the jury rendered harmless any error in the jury instructions regarding the elements of the offense of aggravated identity theft; the indictment was sufficient to charge the offense; no error in ordering two of the eleven aggravated identity theft sentences to run consecutively as the court explicitly referenced the appropriate guidelines sections and provided a reasoned basis for its decision.

Though I am not sure any of these opinion break lots of new jurisprudential ground, the presence of dissents and of other interests facets make all these cases noteworthy.