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Parties Involved:
Alvernest Kennedy
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted March 26, 2020

Decided March 27, 2020

Before

DAVID F. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge

MICHAEL B. BRENNAN, Circuit Judge

MICHAEL Y. SCUDDER, Circuit Judge

No. 19-2593

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

ALVERNEST KENNEDY, JR.,

Defendant-Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.

No. 15-CR-88-JPS

J.P. Stadtmueller,

Judge.

O R D E R

Alvernest Kennedy, Jr. pleaded guilty to possessing a firearm as a felon, 

see 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), and served a 30-month prison sentence. Just one month into his 

term of supervised release, he violated his conditions of supervision by fleeing officers

attempting to make a traffic stop (leading the officers on a high-speed chase that

covered nearly 80 miles and lasted an hour and a half, after which he unsuccessfully 

attempted to flee on foot). Kennedy pleaded guilty in state court to attempting to flee or 

elude an officer and to second-degree reckless endangerment; he was sentenced to four 

and a half years’ imprisonment and four years of supervised release. The government 

then sought to revoke Kennedy’s federal supervised release based on his state court 

convictions (as well as for failing to notify his probation officer that the day after his 

release he had received several traffic citations). The district court revoked Kennedy’s

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

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

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No. 19-2593 Page 2

supervised release and sentenced him to 12 months in prison—6 months to run 

concurrently to his state prison term, and 6 months to run consecutively. Kennedy

appeals, but his appointed counsel concludes that the appeal is frivolous and moves to 

withdraw under Anders v. California, 386 U.S. 738 (1967). 

At the outset we note that the Constitution does not provide a right to counsel in 

a revocation proceeding when, as here, the defendant does not contest the grounds for 

revocation or assert substantial and complex arguments in mitigation of the sentence. 

See Gagnon v. Scarpelli, 411 U.S. 778, 787 (1973); United States v. Eskridge, 445 F.3d 930, 

932–33 (7th Cir. 2006). Therefore, the Anders safeguards need not govern our review, but 

it is our practice to apply them nonetheless. United States v. Wheeler, 814 F.3d 856, 857 

(7th Cir. 2016). Counsel’s brief explains the nature of the case and addresses the issues 

that an appeal of this kind might involve, and Kennedy has not responded to counsel’s

motion. See CIR. R. 51(b). Because the analysis appears thorough, we limit our review to 

the subjects that counsel discusses. United States v. Bey, 748 F.3d 774, 776 (7th Cir. 2014). 

Counsel first considers whether Kennedy could argue that the district court 

abused its discretion by revoking his supervised release and correctly concludes that he 

could not. A district court may revoke supervised release under 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e) if it 

finds by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant violated a condition of 

release. United States v. Musso, 643 F.3d 566, 570 (7th Cir. 2011). Here, Kennedy pleaded 

guilty to two state crimes, and his subsequent state convictions provided ample, 

objective evidence that he violated a condition of his release—namely that he “not 

commit another federal, state, or local crime.” See United States v. Huusko, 275 F.3d 600, 

602–03 (7th Cir. 2001) (district court entitled to rely on state court conviction as proof of 

violation of state law). Further, Kennedy did not object to the facts set forth in the 

revocation hearing report before the district court.

Counsel next explores whether Kennedy could challenge his sentence 

procedurally but properly concludes that doing so would be frivolous. Kennedy did not 

object to the district court's application of the policy statements in Chapter 7 of the 

Sentencing Guidelines, so our review would be for plain error. See United States 

v. Brown, 823 F.3d 392, 394 (7th Cir. 2016). The state court sentenced Kennedy to more 

than one year of imprisonment for each of his two convictions. Thus, under Chapter 7 

each qualified as a Grade B violation of his supervised release. See U.S.S.G. § 7B1.1(a)(2). 

Given Kennedy’s Grade B violations and his uncontested criminal history category of 

III, the district court correctly calculated his recommended range of reimprisonment as

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No. 19-2593 Page 3

8 to 14 months. See id. § 7B1.4(a). So an argument that the court plainly erred in 

calculating that range would be pointless. 

Finally, counsel considers but rightly rejects a challenge to the substantive 

reasonableness of Kennedy’s new sentence. His 12-month sentence falls within the 

policy-statement range and below the applicable two-year statutory maximum. 

See 18 U.S.C. §§ 924(a), 3559(a)(3), 3583(e)(3). A sentence, like Kennedy’s, that falls 

within the policy-statement range is presumptively reasonable. United States v. Jones, 

774 F.3d 399, 404 (7th Cir. 2014). Moreover, the district court sufficiently justified the 

sentence based on the Chapter 7 policy statements and relevant factors under 18 U.S.C. 

§ 3553(a). See 18 U.S.C. § 3565(a). Specifically, the court highlighted the seriousness of 

the violations (that Kennedy had endangered his and others’ lives in a high-speed 

chase), the timing (within a month of his release), and the need to promote respect for 

the law (Kennedy had “learned ... precious little about respect for the law as an 

institution in our society”). In addressing Kennedy’s only argument in mitigation—that 

his entire sentence should run concurrently to his state prison term—the court 

responded that there must be “incremental punishment to put some teeth” into the 

consequences for not abiding by supervised release conditions. But the court accepted

Kennedy’s mitigation argument in part, agreeing that no further federal supervised 

release was warranted and rejecting the guidelines recommendation that he serve the

full revocation sentence consecutively to his state sentence. Under these circumstances, 

it would be frivolous to argue that Kennedy could rebut the presumed reasonableness

of his sentence.

Accordingly, we GRANT counsel's motion to withdraw and DISMISS the appeal.

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