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Sentencing

By: Derek Hawkins//June 20, 2016//

Sentencing

By: Derek Hawkins//June 20, 2016//

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7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: United States of America v. Ifeanyichukwu Ikegwuonu et al.

Case No.: 15-2407; 15-2408

Officials: FLAUM, MANION, and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges

Focus: Sentencing

Precedent requires that a district judge must determine the appropriate sentence for the underlying crime independent of section 924(c)(1) add on. Appellants fail to provide compelling evidence to overturn precedent.

“At oral argument, defendants asserted for the first time that the Supreme Court’s decision in Pepper v. United States, 562 U.S. 476 (2011), compels us to overturn Roberson. This argument is not properly before us, which is reason enough to reject it. See United States v. Conley, 291 F.3d 464, 468 n.3 (7th Cir. 2002) (declining to consider an argument raised for the first time at oral argument). But waiver aside, the contention lacks merit. In Pepper, the Supreme Court pointed to the “wide discretion” of sentencing judges to consider under § 3661 “the fullest information possible concerning the defendant’s life and characteristics,” 562 U.S. at 488 (quoting Williams v. New York, 337 U.S. 241, 247 (1949)), and held that evidence of the defendant’s post‐sentencing rehabilitation could be considered at resentencing, id. at 493. But Pepper does not say that a sentencing court’s discretion is unlimited. See id. at 489 n.8 (noting that “sentencing courts’ discretion under § 3661 is subject to constitutional constraints”). Certain characteristics of a defendant—race, sex, and religion, for ex‐ ample—are well understood as inappropriate factors to con‐ sider at sentencing. See U.S.S.G. § 5H1.10; United States v. Tru‐ jillo‐Castillon, 692 F.3d 575, 579 (7th Cir. 2012). Moreover, a consecutive sentence under § 924(c) is irrelevant to § 3661, which concerns factual information about a defendant’s “background, character, and conduct ….” § 3661; cf. United States v. LaFleur, 971 F.2d 200, 212 n.14 (9th Cir. 1991) (noting that a statute mandating a life sentence was not a “‘limitation’ on the type of information” allowed by § 3661). And even if there were tension between the statutes, we al‐ ready concluded in Roberson that general sentencing provisions, such as § 3661, do not undermine the specific statutory minimum prescribed in § 924(c). See 474 F.3d at 436.”

Affirmed

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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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