Sentencing Guidelines

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: United States of America v. Scott Books

Case No.: 17-3493

Officials: BAUER, BRENNAN, and SCUDDER, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Sentencing Guidelines

On trial for bank robbery, Scott Books chose not to testify in his own defense and was found guilty and sentenced to 180 months’ imprisonment. He now challenges two pretrial decisions by the district court. The first allowed eyewitness testimony at trial from the two bank tellers that Books alleged based their identification of him as the robber not on personal knowledge, but rather on information improperly supplied by a police detective. The second ruling would have allowed the government, had Books chosen to testify at trial, to impeach him with physical evidence directly tying him to the robbery—evidence the police learned of (and then recovered) only as a result of a confession the district court separately had determined was unlawfully coerced.

Neither challenge succeeds. The district court did not err in finding the eyewitness identifications reflected the tellers’ firsthand knowledge of Books, and thus allowing their testimony at trial was entirely proper. Nor can we conclude that the district court’s conditional impeachment ruling, even if wrong on the law, mandates reversal in light of the overwhelming weight of evidence against Books. So we affirm.

Affirmed

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Derek A Hawkins is trademark corporate counsel for Harley-Davidson. Hawkins oversees the prosecution and maintenance of the Harley-Davidson’s international trademark portfolio in emerging markets.