United States v. Weekly

Donna Romero (defendant) was convicted of transporting illegal drugs in a nonviolent offense carrying a five-year mandatory minimum sentence. She sought a reduced sentence under the safety-valve provision of 18 U.S.C. Section 3553(f), available to certain nonviolent offenders with relatively clean records. During sentencing, her husband took and passed a polygraph exam supporting his claim that he alone was responsible for the crime, though no qualified examiner testified about the exam's reliability or administration. On her lawyer's advice, Romero declined to take a similar test. The sentencing judge relied on the husband's polygraph results and Romero's refusal to reject the safety-valve reduction and impose the full five-year sentence, and a majority of the Eighth Circuit affirmed.