Sufficiency of Evidence and Due Process Violation

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: United States of America v. Deshon T. Adams

Case No.: 16-2928

Officials: KANNE, SYKES, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Sufficiency of Evidence and Due Process Violation

Deshon Adams pleaded guilty to unlawfully possessing a firearm as a felon and was sentenced to 87 months in prison—the top of the range recommended by the Sentencing Guidelines. Adams asks us to remand his case for resentencing, arguing that the judge impermissibly considered unreliable evidence linking him to seven unsolved shootings when weighing the sentencing factors under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a).

We reject this argument and affirm. The challenged evidence consists mainly of summaries of police reports describing some of the physical evidence from the shootings and memorializing statements from witnesses, confidential informants, and jailhouse snitches connecting Adams to the crimes. It also includes several statements by Adams himself, who had bragged to police about his involvement in gang violence, though only in very general terms. The government also introduced testimony from a police detective about the reliability of some, though not all, of the confidential informants.

The judge wisely approached this material with caution and in the end declined to make any explicit findings on the subject. Instead, the judge relied on the government’s presentation only very generally, and only to the extent that it confirmed what the presentence report had already documented: Adams is a headstrong young Vice Lords gang member who began committing crimes at age 14 and immersed himself in the gang’s subculture of firearms possession and violence. That careful and limited approach raises no due-process concerns and was certainly not an abuse of discretion.

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.