NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION

File Name: 18a0430n.06

CASE NO. 17-2062

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES of AMERICA,

 Plaintiff-Appellee,

 v.

ARNOLD BENNETT CALDWELL, 

 Defendant-Appellant.

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ON APPEAL FROM THE 

UNITED STATES DISTRICT 

COURT FOR THE WESTERN 

DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN

Before: BATCHELDER, MOORE, and LARSEN, Circuit Judges.

ALICE M. BATCHELDER, Circuit Judge. The defendant appeals the judgment entered 

following his guilty plea to failure to register as a sex offender. We AFFIRM. 

According to the PSR, back in the 1990’s, defendant Arnold Caldwell was living in 

Tacoma, Washington, with his “common law wife,” Kitt Henderson. Henderson had a young niece 

who frequently stayed with them at the residence. When the girl was six or seven years old, 

Caldwell molested her; shortly thereafter, Caldwell entered her bedroom at night and raped her. 

Caldwell continued to rape her every time she spent the night at the residence, which was “about 

every other week” from January 1994 until August 1998. In 2001, when she was 14, the girl 

reported the molestation and rapes to a school counselor and eventually the police.

In March 2004, the State of Washington convicted Caldwell, via guilty plea, of “assault in 

the second degree with sexual motivation,” which required Caldwell to register as a sex offender. 

The State court sentenced Caldwell to eight months in jail, but released him based on time served. 

About two months later, in May 2004, the State convicted Caldwell of failing to register as a sex 

offender and he spent another 26 days in jail. In February 2006, the State again convicted Caldwell 
No. 17-2062, United States v. Caldwell

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of failing to register as a sex offender after he provided a false address (he had registered using the 

address of a bowling alley) and he spent another four months in jail. In June 2007, the State of 

Washington yet again convicted Caldwell of failing to register as a sex offender after he again 

provided a false address, and this time he spent 17 months in prison (charges regarding a second 

false address were dismissed as already incorporated). Following his release in 2008, he was 

returned to custody several times for various other offenses.

In October 2011, Caldwell decided to move to Chicago. He notified the State of 

Washington before departing and, upon arrival, registered with the Illinois Sex Offender Registry 

at the Chicago Police Department. But Caldwell did not comply with the annual registration 

requirements or ever update his registration. By 2013, Chicago police were looking for him. 

Eventually, police discovered that he had moved to Michigan without registering as a sex offender 

in Michigan, in violation of both the Federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act

(SORNA) and Michigan law. When the police arrested Caldwell in February 2017, he admitted 

that he knew the registration requirements and knew that he was in violation, but complained that 

he was “tired” and had struggled to get the necessary documentation, particularly a birth certificate. 

He also admitted that he had not applied for Michigan identification or for welfare assistance 

because that would have given him away. 

In March 2017, the federal grand jury indicted Caldwell on a charge of failing to register 

as a sex offender, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a) and 42 U.S.C. § 16901, et seq.

1

 Caldwell 

pled guilty without a plea agreement. Prior to sentencing, the PSR tabulated Caldwell’s criminal 

history score at 13, which corresponds to a criminal history category of VI. Coupled with a base 

offense level of 10, the PSR’s advisory guideline range was 24 to 30 months in prison. 

 

1 On September 1, 2017, 42 U.S.C. § 16901 was re-classified as 34 U.S.C. § 20901.
No. 17-2062, United States v. Caldwell

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Caldwell objected to the criminal-history-score tabulation’s adding three points from the 

two convictions in 2004 (i.e., the “assault in the second degree with sexual motivation” and the 

first failure to register). Specifically, he argued that because the present offense occurred when he 

moved to Michigan in 2015, the tabulation should not have included the 2004 convictions because 

they had occurred over ten years earlier and were sentences of less than 13 months. See U.S.S.G. 

§ 4A1.2(e)(1) & (2). The PSR responded that the offense actually began in Chicago in December 

2013, on “the date law enforcement discovered [that he] was in violation of SORNA,” and 

continued until his apprehension in Michigan in 2017, as “an ongoing offense that involved the 

same course of conduct,” which put the 2004 convictions within ten years. 

The PSR also explained that if Caldwell were correct, the new criminal history score would 

be ten, the new criminal history category would be V, and—coupled with the base offense level of 

ten—the new PSR advisory guideline range would be 21 to 27 months in prison.

At sentencing, Caldwell argued that the present offense, under SORNA, was based on 

interstate travel from Illinois to Michigan in 2015 and was not the same course of conduct as his 

failure to register in Illinois in 2013, under Illinois law, which involved no interstate travel. The 

district court disagreed, finding that Caldwell’s failures to register on the states’ sex-offender 

registries was a continuing course of conduct for which SORNA provides federal jurisdiction; 

SORNA does not create a national registry or a separate interstate-travel offense. 

The court adopted the PSR’s advisory guidelines range of 24 to 30 months, opined that a

sentence “within the guideline range” would be appropriate, and sentenced Caldwell to 24 months. 

The court’s stated reasons were Caldwell’s repeated convictions for failing to register and the need 

for incremental punishment to ensure that he did not receive a lighter sentence for repeating the 

same violations. Specifically, the court expressed a need to sentence Caldwell to more than the 

17 months in prison that he had received the last time he was sentenced for failing to register.
No. 17-2062, United States v. Caldwell

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In this appeal, Caldwell contests the relevant-conduct determination that underlies his 

sentence. “Because a district court’s relevant-conduct determination involves the application of 

law to facts, we review [it] de novo.” United States v. Amerson, 886 F.3d 568, 573 (6th Cir. 2018)

(citation omitted). “The government bears the burden of proving, by a preponderance of the 

evidence, that another offense constituted relevant conduct.” Id. (citation omitted). For our 

purposes, “relevant conduct” means that the “acts and omissions . . . were part of the same course 

of conduct.” U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3(a)(2). The Guidelines’ commentary elaborates:

Same course of conduct. Offenses that do not qualify as part of a common scheme 

or plan may nonetheless qualify as part of the same course of conduct if they are 

sufficiently connected or related to each other as to warrant the conclusion that they 

are part of a[n] . . . ongoing series of offenses. Factors that are appropriate to the 

determination of whether offenses are sufficiently connected or related to each 

other to be considered as part of the same course of conduct include the degree of 

similarity of the offenses, the regularity (repetitions) of the offenses, and the time 

interval between the offenses. . . . The nature of the offenses may also be a relevant 

consideration (e.g., a defendant’s failure to file tax returns in three consecutive 

years appropriately would be considered as part of the same course of conduct 

because such returns are only required at yearly intervals).

U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3, com. n. 5(B)(ii). 

Caldwell contends that his failure to register as a sex offender in Michigan in 2015 was not 

a continuous course of conduct with his failure to maintain his registration as a sex offender in 

Illinois in 2013 (after he had originally registered in 2011). He argues that the 2013 and 2015 

offenses are not similar, inasmuch as the latter involved interstate travel whereas the former did 

not; the former was a failure to update his registration while the latter was a failure to register at 

all; the two offenses occurred in different states; and the two offenses occurred two years apart. 

The district court was unpersuaded by these same arguments, finding the interstate travel aspect 

irrelevant to the substance of the offense and characterizing Caldwell’s conduct as a longstanding 

refusal to register as required under the law, which was demonstrated by his repeated and 

continuous failures to register in multiple states (i.e., Washington, Illinois, and Michigan) as well 
No. 17-2062, United States v. Caldwell

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as his efforts to avoid detection in Michigan by choosing not to acquire Michigan identification or 

apply for state welfare assistance. 

Caldwell’s arguments fare no better here. SORNA itself disposes of Caldwell’s contention 

that his 2013 Illinois offense and his 2015 Michigan offense are necessarily unconnected or 

unrelated because the former involved no interstate travel. While SORNA did not require Caldwell 

to inform the sex-offender registry in Chicago that he was departing Illinois, see Nichols v. United 

States, 578 U.S. --, 136 S. Ct. 1113 (2016), it nonetheless has two requirements that apply to 

Caldwell here: (1) that he maintain his registration while living in Chicago, see 42 U.S.C. § 

16913(a) (eff. July 27, 2006 to Aug. 31, 2017) (the “sex offender shall register, and keep the 

registration current, in each jurisdiction where the offender resides”); and (2) that he register in 

Michigan within three days of his relocation, such that Michigan could inform the Illinois registry 

of the change, see § 16913(c) (eff. July 27, 2006 to Aug. 31, 2017). Consequently, the 2013 Illinois 

offense and the 2015 Michigan offense are equally violations of SORNA and, given that one led 

directly into the other, they are inherently related. 

This same analysis applies to Caldwell’s frivolous argument that the offenses are unrelated 

because one was a failure to maintain or update his registration while the other was a failure to 

register at all. That distinction is not material. Finally, the fact that the offenses occurred in 

different states and, in Caldwell’s view, two years apart, does not necessarily render them 

unconnected or unrelated. As the district court recognized, the “2013” offense actually spanned 

the time from when Caldwell first failed to update his Illinois registration—at least as early as 

October 2012 when his annual update was due—until he left Illinois for Michigan in 2015, at 

which point these offenses were separated by only the time it took to make the trip.

The district court was correct that the 2013 and 2015 offenses were a continuing course of 

conduct, i.e., “related conduct,” which put the 2004 convictions within ten years of those offenses, 
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so as to include those points in the criminal history tabulation. The court’s advisory guidelines 

calculation was, therefore, correct and the within-guidelines sentence was reasonable.

We AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.