Sentencing Guidelines

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: United States of America v. Gwendolyn Jackson

Case No.: 17-3350

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

Focus: Sentencing Guidelines

Gwendolyn Jackson was convicted in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on charges arising out of a scheme to defraud mortgage lenders. Specifically, a jury found her guilty of two counts of wire fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1343, and one count of mail fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1341. The district court sentenced Ms. Jackson to 112 months’ imprisonment on each of her three counts, to be served concurrently. It also imposed concurrent three‐year terms of supervised release, along with a $300 special assessment and restitution in the amount of $8,515,570.

Ms. Jackson appealed her conviction and her sentence. We affirmed the conviction but vacated the sentence. United States v. Jackson, 787 F.3d 1153, 1161 (7th Cir. 2015). With respect to sentencing, we held that the district court erroneously applied the obstruction‐of‐justice enhancement, given its finding that Ms. Jackson did not commit perjury at trial. Id. at 1160. At resentencing, the district court removed the obstruction‐of‐justice enhancement and imposed a new sentence of 100 months’ imprisonment. It did not change the remaining elements of the sentence: Ms. Jackson also received concurrent three‐year terms of supervised release, a $300 special assessment, and restitution in the amount of $8,515,570.

We review allegations of procedural error in a district court’s imposition of supervised release conditions de novo. United States v. Moore, 788 F.3d 693, 696 (7th Cir. 2015). Ms. Jackson submits, and the Government agrees, that the district court erred when it imposed a supervised release condition in the written judgment that was not orally announced at sentencing.

We have held that when “an inconsistency exists between an oral and the later written sentence, the sentence pronounced from the bench controls.” United States v. Alburay, 415 F.3d 782, 788 (7th Cir. 2005) (quoting United States v. Bonanno, 146 F.3d 502, 511 (7th Cir. 1998)). This rule includes conditions of supervised release. See United States v. Kappes, 782 F.3d 828, 862–63 (7th Cir. 2015); United States v. Johnson, 765 F.3d 702, 711 (7th Cir. 2014). Because the notification condition here was not pronounced from the bench, it must be vacated.

Therefore, Ms. Jackson’s sentence is VACATED, and we REMAND to the district court so that it may enter a corrected judgment without the supervised release condition that Ms. Jackson notify a probation officer within seventy‐two hours of being arrested or questioned by a law enforcement officer.

Vacated and Remanded

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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.