Sentencing – Reasonableness – revocation

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U.S. Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit Criminal

Sentencing – Reasonableness – revocation

The need to hold defendants accountable for their actions is a permissible factor in sentencing after revocation of supervised release.

But accountability is an obvious concern whenever an offender has violated the conditions of supervised release—so obvious that it may not tell us much about the judge’s rationale for the revocation decision. Even so, there’s nothing improper about considering it. To the contrary, an offender who violates the conditions of supervised release commits a “breach of trust,” and revocation is primarily aimed at sanctioning that breach. U.S.S.G. ch. 7, pt. A, intro-ductory cmt. 3(b) (emphasizing the ‘breach of trust’ rationale for revocation policy); see United States v. Clay, 752 F.3d 1106, 1109 (7th Cir. 2014) (explaining that a judge’s remarks about ‘just punishment’ properly ‘describe a sanction that conveys the importance of obeying conditions of supervised release’ (internal quotation marks omitted)); United States v. Johnson, 640 F.3d 195, 203 (6th Cir. 2011); United States v. Young, 634 F.3d 233, 241 (3d Cir. 2011); United States v. Miqbel, 444 F.3d 1173, 1182 (9th Cir. 2006).”

Affirmed.

14-1354 & 14-3096 Appeals from the United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, Crabb, J., Sykes, J.

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