10-1737 U.S. v. Johnson

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Sentencing

Reasonableness

Where the district court did not find that a life sentence was sufficient, but not greater than necessary, to comply with sec. 3553(a)(2), the sentence must be vacated.

“The essence of Kimbrough is to permit district courts to depart from the advisory ratio when its application would result in a sentence that is “greater than necessary to accomplish the goals of sentencing.” Kimbrough, 128 S. Ct. at 570 (internal quotation marks omitted); see id. at 576 (upholding a deviation from the ratio where the district court ‘properly homed in on the particular circumstances of [the defendant’s] case and accorded weight to the Sentencing Commission’s consistent and emphatic position that the crack/powder disparity is at odds with § 3553(a)’). Considered in their totality, the district court’s comments create an unacceptable risk that, in imposing a life sentence, it did not account appropriately for the parsimony clause in the governing statute or for the individual circumstances of Mr. Johnson’s case. See United States v. Shannon, 518 F.3d 494, 496 (7th Cir. 2008) (‘A sentence is reasonable if the district court gives meaningful consideration to the factors enumerated in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) . . . .’ (emphasis added)); United States v. Ross, 501 F.3d 851, 852, 854 (7th Cir. 2007) (per curiam) (vacating sentence where the district court engaged in an ‘apparent weighing of § 3553(a) factors’ but suggested that it could not depart from the Guidelines range even though the sentence was ‘too harsh in light of’ the defendant’s individual circumstances and ‘greater than is necessary to deal with the drug problem’ (quotation marks omitted)).”

Vacated and Remanded.

10-1737 U.S. v. Johnson

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois, Scott, J., Ripple, J.