Sentencing — reasonableness

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United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Criminal

Sentencing — reasonableness

A 24-month sentence for transmitting threatening communications in interstate commerce is not unreasonable, where the defendant continued his harassment, even after being warned by the FBI to stop.

“Lemke has placed all of his cards on his argument that his 24-month sentence is substantively unreasonable. He insists that he was provoked by the first Brown to send a threatening message, but that he would never do such a thing again. He asserts that probation would be a sufficiently humiliating punishment because he is an upstanding citizen in his community. The problem is that these points at best suggest that the district court might also have selected a lesser sentence; they say nothing about whether the sentence the court imposed is unreasonable. From the standpoint of the appellate court, the actual sentence is entitled to a presumption of reasonableness, and so it was Lemke’s difficult burden to point to some reason to think that this sentence was entirely out of bounds. For what it is worth, we find it, if anything, to be lenient; it is certainly not unreasonably high. The government reminds us that Lemke’s actions were ‘disturbing and frightening,’ particularly because he continued to scare his victims even after being warned by the FBI; investigators found maps of his victims’ locations in Lemke’s house; and he resisted arrest. The district court considered these arguments and gave Lemke a below- guidelines sentence.”

Affirmed.

11-2662 U.S. v. Lemke

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Manning, J., Wood, J.