Sentencing — child pornography

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U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit

Criminal

Sentencing — child pornography

Although the sentencing guidelines underwent numerous revisions during the course of the defendant’s criminal conduct, any error in calculating the guidelines was harmless.

“[W]e conclude that if the district court made any error in calculating the range for Count I, it was harmless. First, we note that the final guidelines range was not, in fact, life. As the district court recognized, the statutory maximum for Count I is twenty years; for Count II, fifteen years; for Count III, five years; for Count IV, twenty years; and for Count V, ten years. ‘Where the statutorily authorized maximum sentence is less than the minimum of the applicable guideline range, the statutorily authorized maximum sentence shall be the guideline sentence.’ U.S.S.G. § 5G1.1. For Count I, then, the range of ‘life’ was effectively reduced to twenty years, the statutory maximum. For Counts II through V, the range of ‘life’ was reduced to the sum of the statutory maximum sentences as if they were applied consecutively, in this instance, fifty years (fifteen plus five plus twenty plus ten). See United States v. Boroczk, 705 F.3d 616, 622 (7th Cir. 2013), cert. denied, 134 S. Ct. 288 (2014) (explaining that a guidelines range of life defaults under section 5G1.1(a) to the sum of the statutory maximum sentences for each count). Because the range for each group was restricted by the statutory maximum, the government’s contention that the range was life no matter whether the court included Count I falls flat. Second, the court ordered that the sentence for Count IV be served consecutively to the sentence for Count I, and that the sentences for the remaining counts be served concurrently with those counts. Thus, if the court erred in calculating the sentencing range for Count I, the government’s theory alone could not assure us that the error had no effect on the court’s selection of a sentence.”

Affirmed.

12-3104 U.S. v. Fletcher

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, Van Bokkelen, J., Rovner, J.