Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-16-02820/USCOURTS-ca7-16-02820-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Danny K. Jones
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted January 18, 2017

Decided January 18, 2017

Before

WILLIAM J. BAUER, Circuit Judge

ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge

DIANE S. SYKES, Circuit Judge

No. 16-2820

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

DANNY K. JONES,

Defendant-Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.

No. 14-CR-196

C. N. Clevert, Jr.,

Judge.

O R D E R

Danny Jones helped lead a conspiracy that stole credit card numbers, used them 

to purchase tickets to concerts and sporting events, and reaped the profits from reselling 

the tickets to unsuspecting buyers. Jones obtained credit card numbers, directed 

purchases with them, and made many fraudulent purchases himself. He pleaded guilty 

to conspiracy to commit credit card fraud, 18 U.S.C. § 1029(a), (b)(2), and aggravated 

identity theft, id. § 1028A. His guidelines imprisonment range for these crimes was 

87 to 102 months, which included a mandatory two-year consecutive sentence for the 

§ 1028A offense. The district court sentenced him to a total of 70 months’ imprisonment 

to be followed by 3 years’ supervised release. Jones filed a notice of appeal, but his 

appointed attorney moves to withdraw on the ground that the appeal is frivolous. 

See Anders v. California, 386 U.S. 738 (1967). Jones has not accepted our invitation to 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1

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No. 16-2820 Page 2

comment on counsel’s motion. See CIR. R. 51(b). Counsel has submitted a brief that 

explains the nature of the case and addresses issues that an appeal of this kind might be 

expected to involve. Because the analysis in the brief appears to be thorough, we limit 

our review to the subjects that counsel discusses. See United States v. Bey, 748 F.3d 774, 

776 (7th Cir. 2014); United States v. Wagner, 103 F.3d 551, 553 (7th Cir. 1996).

Counsel tells us that Jones does not wish to challenge his guilty pleas and thus 

appropriately forgoes discussing the voluntariness of those pleas and the adequacy of 

the plea colloquy. See FED. R. CRIM. P. 11; United States v. Konczak, 683 F.3d 348, 349

(7th Cir. 2012); United States v. Knox, 287 F.3d 667, 670–71 (7th Cir. 2002).

Counsel has not identified any potential procedural error at sentencing, leaving 

only the possible claim that Jones’s sentence is substantively unreasonable. But as 

counsel correctly recognizes, that claim would be frivolous. The total offense level of 25 

for the § 1029 conspiracy coupled with Jones’s criminal history category of II yielded a 

guidelines imprisonment range of 63 to 78 months for that charge. With the mandatory, 

consecutive term for identity theft, the effective range was 87 to 102 months. Jones had 

cooperated, however, and on the government’s motion, see U.S.S.G. § 5K1.1, the district 

court sentenced him to a total of 70 months to reward his substantial assistance. Jones’s 

sentence is substantially below the guidelines range (contrary to counsel’s

characterization, granting the § 5K1.1 motion did not change Jones’s guidelines range)

and thus is presumed reasonable, see Rita v. United States, 551 U.S. 338, 347 (2007); 

United States v. Womack, 732 F.3d 745, 747 (7th Cir. 2013), as is his within-guidelines term 

of 3 years’ supervised release, see United States v. Jones, 774 F.3d 399, 404 (7th Cir. 2014). 

Counsel has not identified any reason to rebut those presumptions, nor have we.

In determining the appropriate sentence, the district court addressed Jones’s 

arguments in mitigation and evaluated the sentencing factors in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). The 

court recognized that Jones had accepted responsibility for his actions and was working 

to improve himself through reading and “soul searching.” But the district court also 

emphasized the number of people affected by his crimes and the need to deter others

from engaging in like misconduct. The district court was particularly concerned with 

ongoing criminal conduct while on pretrial release. Jones had assaulted a codefendant’s 

brother (his fiancée’s son) to dissuade the codefendant from cooperating with 

authorities. He had also engaged in credit card fraud for months after his arraignment, 

even after being placed on location monitoring following the assault. The district judge 

told Jones that he could not “come in here and expect minimal treatment when after 

being charged and after being ordered by the Court to change your behavior you go out 

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and you commit additional crimes identical to what has been charged.” Even so, the 

district court imposed a below-guidelines sentence to account for Jones’s assistance to 

authorities. See U.S.S.G. § 5K1.1. Thus, any challenge to the substantive reasonableness 

of the sentence would be frivolous.

Counsel’s motion to withdraw is GRANTED, and the appeal is DISMISSED.

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