Juries never sentence anyone in Federal Court - judges do. There are several misstatements like this throughout the article. While I appreciate the content in the article, it is horribly written. This issue is too important to assign to an uninformed rookie who writes like a high school junior.
Finally, Congress determined the penalties imposed on Compean and Ramos, by setting the punishment for discharging a firearm during a crime of violence at imprisonment for at least ten years, on top of any other sentence imposed.
I think they mean that by convicting Ramos and Compean they automatically sentenced them to at least ten years.