Sentencing — sentencing guidelines — discretion

Listen to this article

United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Criminal

Sentencing — sentencing guidelines — discretion

Where the district court may not have known it had authority to sentence a career offender to a below guideline sentence, a limited remand is appropriate.

“Though the court certainly could have varied its sentence further, Redmond presents little to show that the district court was constrained in its decision making process. Moreover, that the court sentenced Redmond below the advisory career offender range, suggests that it was not constrained by the guideline calculation. Even so, the district court did suggest that Redmond’s status as a career offender was a significant factor in its sentence, and it is not clear that the court recognized its complete discretion to deviate from the Guidelines career-offender calculation. Corner was decided after Redmond was sentenced, so we return this case to the district court on a limited remand to allow the court to indicate whether it might be inclined to impose a different sentence if it knew the full extent of its discretion. See United States v. Womack, 610 F.3d 427, 434 (7th Cir. 2010).”

Affirmed in part and Remanded in part.

10-1947 & 10-3914 U.S. v. Redmond

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, Young, J., Flaum, J.