United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit 

Chicago, Illinois 60604 

Submitted June 22, 2020*

Decided June 22, 2020 

Before 

KENNETH F. RIPPLE, Circuit Judge 

DAVID F. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge 

MICHAEL Y. SCUDDER, Circuit Judge

No. 19-3232 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

v. 

JEROME G. HUGHES, 

 Defendant-Appellant.

 Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Western District of Wisconsin. 

No. 07-cr-33-bbc 

Barbara B. Crabb, 

Judge. 

O R D E R 

A decade after he was convicted of a cocaine-base (“crack”) offense, Jerome 

Hughes moved to reduce his 40-year sentence to 20 years under the First Step Act 

of 2018. Pub. L. No. 115-391, tit. IV, § 404, 132 Stat. 5194. The district court granted 

Hughes’s request, but not to the extent that he wanted, reducing his term only to 

25 years. We affirm. 

*

 We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument because the briefs and 

record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not 

significantly aid the court. FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C). 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION 

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 
No. 19-3232 Page 2 

At Hughes’s original sentencing hearing, the court miscalculated his guidelines 

range and imposed a life sentence. Hughes appealed, and we vacated his sentence and 

remanded the case for resentencing based on a range of 360 months to life. United States 

v. Taylor, 302 F. App’x. 478, 479–80 (7th Cir. 2008). 

On remand, the court sentenced Hughes to 40 years in prison. Central to the 

court’s decision was an assessment that the community needed to be protected: 

Hughes’s past violence—a long record like the court had “never seen”—included 

several batteries and one instance where he had tortured a police informant. For his 

part, Hughes acknowledged his past wrongs, expressed remorse and a desire to change 

his life, and asked the court for mercy. The court acknowledged Hughes’s comments, 

stating that it hoped he would change his ways in the future. 

In 2018, Congress passed the First Step Act, which made provisions of the Fair 

Sentencing Act of 2010 retroactive for certain defendants convicted of crack-related 

offenses. Under the First Step Act, district courts “may ... impose a reduced sentence” 

for these defendants as if the Fair Sentencing Act had been in effect at the time of their 

offenses. First Step Act § 404(b). The Fair Sentencing Act, in relevant part, modified 

21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(B)—the subsection under which Hughes was sentenced—by 

reducing its statutory minimum penalties and increasing the amount of crack needed to 

trigger those penalties from 5 to 28 grams. See Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, Pub. L. 

No. 111-220, § 2(a)(2), 124 Stat. 2372; Dorsey v. United States, 567 U.S. 260, 269 (2012). 

Had the Fair Sentencing Act been in place, Hughes—whose charged conduct involved 

13.21 grams of crack—would have faced a statutory sentencing range of 0 to 30 years 

instead of 10 years to life. Compare 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(C) (2018), with 21 U.S.C. 

§ 841(b)(1)(B)(iii) (2007). 

Hughes moved under the First Step Act to reduce his sentence to 20 years. 

Stating that his conviction was a “wake up call” that led him to turn his life around, he 

pointed to his many accomplishments while in prison—earning a GED, improving his 

behavior, and dedicating himself to his children. The government agreed that Hughes 

was eligible for a reduction, but stated he should receive a sentence of 30 years—the 

new statutory maximum—in light of his “persistent, significant, and violent criminal 

history.” 

The district court reduced his sentence to 25 years. Though it recognized 

Hughes’s “increasing maturity ... displayed over the years in which he has been 

incarcerated” as well as his “encouraging” reports of progress, the court concluded that 

the full reduction could not “be justified” in light of his past violence. 
No. 19-3232 Page 3 

Hughes appeals, arguing that the district court abused its discretion by 

considering and giving too much weight to his prior criminal history. But when a court 

imposes a sentence, “[n]o limitation” is placed on the information it may consider with 

respect to a defendant’s “background, character, and conduct.” 18 U.S.C. § 3661. When 

determining whether a reduction is appropriate under the First Step Act, courts may 

refer to the statutory framework in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), see United States v. Shaw, 957 F.3d 

734, 741–42 (7th Cir. 2020), which allows a defendant’s prior criminal history to be 

balanced against evidence of his rehabilitation, see Pepper v. United States, 562 U.S. 476, 

490–91 (2011). That is precisely what the district court did here: It concluded that the 

reduction Hughes requested could not “be justified in light of his record,” but a partial 

reduction was warranted “in recognition of the increasing maturity that he has 

displayed over the years in which he has been incarcerated.” This conclusion falls well 

within the broad discretion afforded to district courts weighing the § 3553(a) factors. 

See United States v. Adams, 879 F.3d 826, 829 (7th Cir. 2018). 

Finally, Hughes seems to believe that he deserves a lower sentence because his 

career-offender designation at his initial sentencing has been invalidated by intervening 

law. This argument is misplaced, however, because any change in the law would not 

have affected his sentence, which was based on his alternative (higher) 

non-career-offender guidelines calculation. See U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1(b). 

AFFIRMED