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Sentencing Guidelines

By: Derek Hawkins//July 16, 2018//

Sentencing Guidelines

By: Derek Hawkins//July 16, 2018//

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7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: United States of America v. Carl Moose

Case No.: 16-3536

Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, and RIPPLE and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Sentencing Guidelines

Without a plea agreement, defendant Carl Moose pleaded guilty to defrauding investors in violation of the federal wire fraud statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1343. The district court gave him a below-guideline sentence of two years in prison and an additional two years of supervised release. Moose has appealed, challenging both his prison sentence and the length and several specific conditions of his supervised release. We affirm the prison sentence and the length of the supervised release term, but remand for the limited purpose of considering several conditions of supervised release. We address in turn Moose’s challenges to: (1) the loss amount the district court used in calculating his guideline sentencing range; (2) the fraud guideline’s treatment of loss amounts more generally; and (3) the supervised release portion of Moose’s sentence, including the duration and conditions of the supervised release sentence.

Though a judge “need not give a speech about each condition, … sentencing judges rarely, if ever, should list a multitude of conditions without discussion.” Kappes, 782 F.3d at 846. The needs for these challenged conditions were not so obvious here that explanation was unnecessary in overruling objections. The defendant, through his attorney, expressed reasonable concerns about several of the conditions imposed on him through supervised release. The sentencing judge rejected these arguments without explanation. In doing so, the sentencing judge failed to exercise properly his discretion in imposing a supervised release sentence. Because of this failure, we VACATE the challenged conditions of supervised release and REMAND for the limited purpose of addressing those conditions of supervised release. The 24-month prison sentence and 24-month supervised release terms, however, are AFFIRMED.

Vacated and Remanded in part. Affirmed in part.

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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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