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Criminal – Pleas & Sentencing – Sentence Conditions

By: Derek Hawkins//December 2, 2015//

Criminal – Pleas & Sentencing – Sentence Conditions

By: Derek Hawkins//December 2, 2015//

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7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case No.: 14-2246

Case Name: United States of America v. Qubid Coleman

Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, ROVNER, Circuit Judge, and SHAH, District Judge.

Pertinent Practice Areas: Criminal – Pleas & Sentencing – Sentence Conditions

Court error in inclusion of conditions held to be impermissibly vague simply calls for resentencing as related to conditions of supervised release.

“Coleman was sentenced in May 2014. Since then, “several decisions of this court have clarified the analysis required to decide what conditions [of supervised release] to impose in what circumstances.” United States v. Harper, —F.3d —, 2015 WL 6839542, at *3 (7th Cir. Nov. 6, 2015). Before imposing a term of supervised release, the sentencing court should give advance notice of the conditions being considered, and when imposing the conditions, the court must justify the conditions by an adequate statement of reasons reasonably related to the § 3553(a) factors. Kappes, 782 F.3d at 842–45. These procedural safeguards were omitted from Coleman’s sentencing, and, as a substantive matter, certain conditions imposed on Coleman were impermissibly vague (e.g., “the defendant shall not associate with any persons engaged in criminal activity”). See id. at 849 (citing United States v. Thompson, 777 F.3d 368, 376–77 (7th Cir. 2015)). The government concedes the error and also waives any reliance on Coleman’s appellate waiver to avoid a remand. Coleman requests a remand for full resentencing. We have described prison and supervised release as substitutes as well as complements, and therefore, it makes sense to remand for a full resentencing to allow the district judge to reexamine the entire sentence. United States v. Downs, 784 F.3d 1180, 1182 (7th Cir. 2015) (“When a sentence consists of more than one form of punishment, such as prison, a fine, restitution, and supervised release, and one of the forms is as in this case altered by the appellate court, it cannot be assumed that the others should be unaffected.”).

Affirmed as to conviction

Vacated and remanded as to sentence

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Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.

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