Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-09-01457/USCOURTS-ca7-09-01457-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Micah W. Richardson
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Argued March 2, 2010

Decided June 29, 2010

Before

DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge

ANN CLAIRE WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge

DAVID F. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge

No. 09‐1457

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff‐Appellee,

v.

MICAH W. RICHARDSON,

Defendant‐Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District

Court for the Western District

of Wisconsin.

No. 08‐CR‐149‐C‐03

Barbara B. Crabb,

Judge.

O R D E R

Micah Richardson pleaded guilty to distributing crack and was sentenced to 156

months’ imprisonment – a term that fell near the bottom of his advisory guidelines range. On

appeal, he argues thathis sentencingproceeding wasprocedurally flawedandthathisultimate

sentence was substantively unreasonable. Finding no reversible error, we affirm.

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with

Fed. R. App. P. 32.1

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No. 09‐1457 Page 2

In December 2008, Richardson entered his guilty plea to charges of knowingly and

intentionally distributing crack, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) and 18 U.S.C. § 2. At the

sentencing hearing in February 2009, the district court adopted the probation officer’s estimate

that Richardson had distributed approximately 161 to 163 grams of crack. This amount

attributed five ounces (about 142 grams) of crack to Richardson based on money that was

seized from him at the time of his arrest. The probation officer applied a base offense level of

32, and then added two levels for use of a dangerous weapon in connection with the drug

activities (for beating a customer with a baseball bat), and finally subtracted three levels for

acceptance of responsibility. This gave Richardson a final offense level of 31. His criminal

history category was IV, which meant that the guidelines advised a sentence between 151 and

188 months’ imprisonment. The district court misstated this range, both at sentencing and in

its written statement of reasons, as 155 to 188 months, but Richardson has made nothing on

appeal of that error.

Instead,Richardsonfocusedhis objections both in thedistrict court andbefore this court

on the disparity between the sentences recommended for crack offenses and those for powder

cocaine offenses. He requested a sentence within the range that would have applied for

distributing an identical amount of powder cocaine – that is, something between 37 and 46

months. The court rejected his request, citing his accelerating pattern of violent criminal

conduct. As we noted above, it imposed a sentence of 156 months’ imprisonment.

Richardson’s first complaint on appeal is that the district court failed adequately to

explain why it stayed with the crack guidelines and refused to treat crack as leniently as

powder would have been treated. But the district court was not required to go as far as

Richardson would have liked. It is true that a sentencing court must give sufficientreasons for

its decisions to permit meaningful appellate review. See United States v. Are, 590 F.3d 499, 530

(7th Cir. 2009). This is exactly what the district court did. At sentencing, the court announced

that it was adopting the calculations in the presentence report; this was enough to reveal that

it was computing the advisory guidelines range using the crack guidelines that appeared in the

then‐current 2008 U.S. SENTENCING GUIDELINESMANUAL. Helpfully, the court even mentioned

what the range would have been, if Richardson had been charged with an identical amount of

powder cocaine, indicating that it was aware of the significant differential and was making a

conscious choice. It was also well aware of its discretion under Kimbrough v. United States, 552

U.S. 85 (2007), to deviate from the crack guidelines, but it was equally correct that it was under

no obligation to do so.

Richardson argues in the alternative that even if his sentence was procedurally

unobjectionable, it was substantively unreasonable for the district court to adhere to the crack

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No. 09‐1457 Page 3

ranges in his case. This is so, he contends, because the policy judgment reflected by the

disparate crack‐to‐powder ratio, in his view, has been repudiated by the U.S. Sentencing

Commission. He adds that the court’s use of that ratio violated the “parsimony provision” of

18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), referring to the admonition that sentences should be “sufficient, but not

greater than necessary, to comply with” the purposes set forth in the statute.

Both arguments are unavailing. As we have noted, Kimbrough held only that district

courts retain discretion to differ with the advisory crack‐powderratio in the guidelines. 552 U.S.

at 110‐11; see also United States v. House, 551 F.3d 694, 700‐01 (7th Cir. 2008). It does not compel

any particular sentence, or sentencing range. While the Sentencing Commission did revise the

crack guidelines to reduce the disparity somewhat, see U.S.S.G. Supp. to App. C, pp. 226‐31

(2007) (Amendment 706); U.S.S.G. Supp. to App. C, p. 253 (Amendment 713), it did not erase

the disparity. The revised guidelines still treat crack and powder cocaine offenses differently,

see U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1, and a district court that agrees with the policy underlying the crack

guidelines does not abuse its discretion by imposing a sentence within those guidelines. See

United States v. Scott, 555 F.3d 605, 610 (7th Cir. 2009).

The parsimony provision to which Richardson refers is best understood as an

admonition to the district court to impose a reasonable sentence. See United States v. Ministro‐

Tapia, 470 F.3d 137, 142‐43 (2d Cir. 2006). An appellate court may treat a sentence falling within

a properly calculated guidelines range as presumptively reasonable, see Rita v. United States,

551 U.S. 338, 347 (2007); United States v. Noel, 581 F.3d 490, 500 (7th Cir. 2009), and it is unlikely

that such a sentence would violate the parsimony principle. See United States v. Turbides‐

Leonardo, 468 F.3d 34, 41 (1st Cir. 2006). We note in this connection that, contrary to

Richardson’s argument, we seenothing in the recordindicating thatthedistrict courtpresumed

that the guidelines sentence was reasonable. That would have been an error, see United States

v. Nurek, 578 F.3d 618, 625‐26 (7th Cir. 2009), but it did not happen.

We conclude by underscoring the fact that the district court engaged in exactly the kind

of careful individual inquiry that is called for. It considered Richardson’s accelerating criminal

conduct, which included beating a man with a baseball bat over a $40 drug debt, and the need

to impose a punishment sufficient to deter him from committing further crimes. It

acknowledged that he had a troubled background, but it decided that this was not sufficient

to overcome the need to impose a significant sentence on him. The final sentence of 156 months

was thus neither procedurally nor substantively objectionable.

The judgment of the district court is therefore AFFIRMED.

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