United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted August 14, 2008

Decided August 22, 2008

Before

 RICHARD D. CUDAHY, Circuit Judge

 DANIEL A. MANION, Circuit Judge

 JOHN DANIEL TINDER, Circuit Judge

No. 08-1302

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

STEVEN ROMERO,

Defendant-Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District

Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.

No. 07-CR-180

Rudolph T. Randa, 

Chief Judge.

O R D E R

Steven Romero pleaded guilty to threatening to murder a member of the immediate

family of a United States magistrate judge. See 18 U.S.C. § 115(a)(1)(A). Because Romero

already had at least two felony convictions for crimes of violence, the district court found

that he qualified as a career offender, see U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1, and sentenced him to 96 months’

imprisonment and 3 years’ supervised release. Romero filed a notice of appeal, but his

appointed attorney has moved to withdraw because he cannot discern a nonfrivolous basis

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with

Fed. R. App. P. 32.1
No. 08-1302 Page 2

for appeal. See Anders v. California, 386 U.S. 738 (1967). Romero did not respond to our

invitation to comment on counsel’s motion, see CIR. R. 51(B), and so we confine our review

to the potential issues identified in counsel’s facially adequate brief, see United States v.

Schuh, 289 F.3d 968, 973-74 (7th Cir. 2002).

Counsel first considers whether Romero could argue that the district court erred in

sentencing him as a career offender. See U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1. Counsel, though, is unable to

articulate any conceivable disagreement with the court’s ruling, and nor are we. A

defendant convicted of committing a crime of violence or controlled substance offense

qualifies as a career offender if he was at least 18 years old at the time and already had two

or more felony convictions for such crimes. Id. § 4B1.1(a); United States v. Rice, 520 F.3d 811,

820 (7th Cir. 2008). Romero is 36, and his felony convictions for threatening to murder a

magistrate judge and threatening to harm a corrections supervisor are crimes of violence,

see United States v. Ladwig, 432 F.3d 1001, 1005 (9th Cir. 2005) (holding that a threat to harm

another person is a crime of violence); see also U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2(a) (defining “crime of

violence” to include any offense having as an element the “threatened use of physical force

against the person of another.”), which Romero did not dispute at sentencing. Thus, any

argument that Romero is not a career offender would be frivolous.

Counsel next contemplates challenging the reasonableness of Romero’s 96-month

prison sentence but concludes that any such argument would be frivolous. We agree. A

sentence within a correctly calculated guidelines range is presumptively reasonable. Rita v.

United States, 127 S. Ct. 2456, 2462 (2007); United States v. Harvey, 516 F.3d 553, 556 (7th Cir.

2008). In assessing reasonableness, we ask whether the district court gave “meaningful

consideration” to the sentencing factors set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). United States v.

Shannon, 518 F.3d 494, 496 (7th Cir. 2008). Here, the district court properly calculated a

guidelines range of 77 to 96 months and imposed a term within that range after taking into

account the factors in § 3553(a), including Romero’s criminal history, mental illnesses, and

the danger he presents to others. Counsel cannot identify any basis for concluding that

Romero’s sentence might be the exception to Rita’s presumption of reasonableness, nor can

we.

To the extent that counsel has assessed whether Romero was adequately

represented in the district court, any potential claim about his lawyer’s performance would

be better pursued in a collateral proceeding under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 because the claim

would turn on matters not in the record, see, e.g., Massaro v. United States, 538 U.S. 500, 504-

05 (2003); United States v. Parker, 469 F.3d 1074, 1075 n.1 (7th Cir. 2006), and because Romero

is still represented by the same lawyer, see United States v. Rezin, 322 F.3d 443, 445 (7th Cir.

2003).
No. 08-1302 Page 3

For the above reasons, counsel’s motion to withdraw is GRANTED, and the appeal

is DISMISSED.