In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________

Nos. 03-3293 & 03-3294

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

RONALD J. VALLE,

Defendant-Appellant.

____________

Appeals from the United States District Court

for the Central District of Illinois.

Nos. 02 CR 40154 & 02 CR 40201—Michael M. Mihm, Judge.

____________

ARGUED JUNE 16, 2004—DECIDED AUGUST 15, 2006

____________

Before COFFEY, RIPPLE and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.

RIPPLE, Circuit Judge. Ronald Valle was sentenced to 163

months’ imprisonment for bank robbery and for violation of

his supervised release. He appealed his sentence. Because

Mr. Valle was sentenced prior to the Supreme Court’s

decision in United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005), we

ordered a limited remand to determine whether the district

court would have imposed a different sentence had it not

been bound by the then-mandatory United States Sentencing Guidelines. The district court has advised us that it

would not have imposed a different sentence, and we now

affirm the judgment of the district court.
2 Nos. 03-3293 & 03-3294

1 The report also explained that, during the investigation of these

robberies, Mr. Valle was brought in for questioning and

Mirandized. During this questioning session, Mr. Valle admitted to robbing nineteen banks in Southern California, Arizona

and Florida.

I

A.

According to a written agreement with the Government,

Ronald Valle pleaded guilty to one count each of aggravated bank robbery, see 18 U.S.C. § 2113(a), interstate

transportation of a stolen motor vehicle, see 18 U.S.C.

§ 2312, and false representation of a social security number, see 42 U.S.C. § 408(a)(7)(B). Six other counts of bank

fraud, see 18 U.S.C. § 1344, were dismissed as part of the

agreement.

The presentence report prepared for Mr. Valle’s sentencing calculated his offense level at 19 and designated

his criminal history category at VI, which resulted in a

guideline range of 63 to 78 months’ imprisonment. However, the presentence report also suggested that an upward departure might be warranted because the guideline range did not reflect adequately the extent of Mr.

Valle’s criminal history. Specifically, the report noted that,

in a prior prosecution for bank robbery in California,

Mr. Valle had committed a total of six robberies, but

several of those counts were combined for charging purposes.1

 The report recommended two methods for increasing Mr. Valle’s sentencing range. First, the district court

could increase Mr. Valle’s offense level to reflect his prior

criminal conduct. Second, the presentence report proposed

that the district court could employ the career criminal
Nos. 03-3293 & 03-3294 3

guideline. See U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1. According to the presentence

report, if Mr. Valle had received separate sentences for his

prior robberies, he would have been considered a career

offender under the Guidelines. Considering Mr. Valle a

career criminal would increase his offense level to 32, and

after a 3-level adjustment for acceptance of responsibility,

result in an offense level of 29 and a corresponding guideline range of 151 to 188 months.

Because Mr. Valle committed the crimes underlying the

present conviction while on supervised release for a prior

conviction, the presentence report also calculated a separate

sentencing range for Mr. Valle’s violation of the terms of his

supervised release. Based on the grade of Mr. Valle’s

supervised release violation, combined with his criminal

history category at the time of his original sentencing, the

report recommended a sentence of 18 to 24 months’ imprisonment.

At the initial sentencing hearing, the district court solicited the parties’ positions on the upward departure suggested by the probation office. The attorney for the Government responded accordingly:

As a result of extensive discussion with [Mr. Valle’s

counsel] . . . , I believe the parties are willing to agree

to recommend to this Court a 4A1.3 departure, upward departure of five levels, which would take the

defendant from a current level of 19 up to a level 24,

which with a criminal history category VI results in a

sentencing range of 100 to 125 months, and, Your

Honor, in coupling that with the 18-24 month recommended sentence for the revocation [of Mr. Valle’s

supervised release] would result in a range which

includes 120 months, and I believe the parties are here
4 Nos. 03-3293 & 03-3294

to jointly recommend to the Court a sentence of 120

months.

R.20 at 5. Mr. Valle’s counsel informed the court that he was

concerned about the possibility of a significant upward departure and, consequently, “ha[d] counseled his

client to join in this recommendation for a . . . sentence to

the bank robbery offense with a consecutive sentence to

the revocation,” totaling 120 months; defense counsel

further advised the court that Mr. Valle had “agree[d] to

that term of custody.” Id. at 7.

The court, however, was concerned that a sentence of 120

months did not reflect the seriousness of Mr. Valle’s conduct. It stated:

In looking at the defendant’s record—I apologize for

making this record, but I think I need to. He starts out

at the age of 24 with a false report of a crime . . . . Then

we have him on forgery charges in 1990 at the age of 26,

deceptive practices at the age of 26. We have these

California armed robberies—unarmed robberies—I’m

sorry—and apparently there were just a ton of bank

robberies that are really not reflected in that sentence.

We also had this unarmed bank robbery in the Central

District of Illinois. I think that was all part of the

same deal and he got 108 months there.

It seems to me that there’s a very strong argument

that this defendant really—that the Court would almost

be remiss in not departing upward to a level that would

reflect him as being a career offender, especially since

part of what he had admitted to here is another bank

robbery.

Id. at 7-8. The court then determined that the only way

that it could accept the proposed sentence was also to
Nos. 03-3293 & 03-3294 5

impose a longer period of supervised release by stacking the

terms of supervised release for each offense. Mr. Valle

initially agreed to this arrangement. However, before the

district court imposed sentence, Mr. Valle’s counsel invited

the court’s attention to case law that called into question the

court’s ability to stack periods of supervised release. The

district court then continued the hearing to allow the parties

to conduct further research on the issue.

At a continued hearing, the court determined that it could

not stack periods of supervised release. It again expressed

doubt that the 120-month sentence, without the additional

period of supervised release, adequately reflected the

seriousness of Mr. Valle’s crimes and criminal history or

adequately protected the public from possible criminal acts

that Mr. Valle may commit in the future. The court continued the sentencing hearing again to allow Mr. Valle time to

reconsider his plea agreement in light of the court’s reluctance to accept the 120-month term.

After this hearing, Mr. Valle renegotiated his plea agreement with the Government. The new plea agreement acknowledged the possibility of a significant upward

departure, but, unlike the first agreement, it did not contain a sentence appeal waiver.

The parties then reconvened for the final sentencing

hearing. During that hearing, the Government advocated an

upward departure using either method set forth in the PSR.

Specifically, counsel for the Government stated that he

believed “12 years is an appropriate sentence.” R.22 at 15.

Mr. Valle’s counsel maintained that all of Mr. Valle’s prior

criminal conduct had been accounted for in the

initial sentencing calculation. He opined that the upward departure sought by the Government really was

designed to compensate for poor decisionmaking by the
6 Nos. 03-3293 & 03-3294

2 During the initial sentencing hearing, the district court posed

the following question to Mr. Valle: “Based on your reading

and review [of the presentence report], other than the issues that

we’ve already addressed, is there anything else in the report

that you feel is inaccurate or incomplete that you wish to

challenge?” R.20 at 12. Mr. Valle responded: “As far as the accuracy of the PSR report, Your Honor, I tend to agree that the

crimes that were committed is completely accurate . . . .” Id.

Government in its prior prosecutions of Mr. Valle. Finally,

Mr. Valle’s counsel objected to the court’s reliance on certain

information contained in the PSR, specifically an in-custody

statement made by Mr. Valle during which he admitted that

he had committed nineteen robberies in California, Arizona

and Florida. Mr. Valle’s counsel stated:

I object to the reliance upon that because there has

been—we were not parties to that. I have not received

discovery with respect to that. There is no 302 memorializing this. We don’t know whether that’s true,

whether there is any factual basis to support it, whether

there are specific banks referenced. Again, I don’t have

that information.

Id. at 38.2

After hearing arguments from the parties, the court

determined that Mr. Valle’s lengthy record of robberies,

combined with the fact that Mr. Valle committed the instant

robbery while on supervised release, took this case out of

the heartland of robbery cases and justified an upward

departure. Using the career criminal guideline range as a

starting point, the court sentenced Mr. Valle to 139 months’

imprisonment for the crimes to which he had pleaded

guilty, twelve months less than the bottom range for career

criminals; the court also imposed an additional twenty-four
Nos. 03-3293 & 03-3294 7

month sentence for violation of the terms of his supervised

release. Mr. Valle appealed.

B.

This court held the appeal in abeyance until the Supreme

Court handed down its decision in United States v. Booker,

543 U.S. 220 (2005). Noting that “the district court’s decision

to increase Mr. Valle’s sentence without jury fact-finding”

implicated Mr. Valle’s Sixth Amendment rights, we ordered

a limited remand pursuant to Paladino v. United States, 401

F.3d 471 (7th Cir. 2005), to allow the district court to inform

this court whether it would have imposed a different

sentence had it understood the Guidelines to be advisory.

In accordance with the remand order, the district court

requested statements from the parties concerning the

propriety of the sentence. After considering these submissions, the district court advised us accordingly:

After receiving the Remand, the court studied the

presentence report and received briefs from counsel as

to whether the court should ask to have the case returned here for a new sentencing. . . .

The court believes that the sentence imposed at the

original sentencing hearing was the correct one, and

that a full Remand would serve no useful purpose.

Order, December 29, 2005, (“Paladino Remand Order”) at 1.

The court went on to explain its decision with reference

to the sentencing factors set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a).

We have solicited the parties’ responses to the district

court’s Paladino Remand Order and address their contentions below.
8 Nos. 03-3293 & 03-3294

II

In United States v. Rodriguez, 425 F.3d 1041, 1046 (7th Cir.

2005), we outlined the responsibility of sentencing courts in

this post-Booker era:

Sentencing courts must continue to calculate the applicable guidelines range even though the guidelines are

now advisory. Courts must also give defendants the

opportunity to draw the judge’s attention to any factor

listed in 3553(a) that might warrant a sentence different

from the guidelines sentence. In entering the sentence,

the judge must consider the sentencing factors in §

3553(a) and articulate the factors that determined the

sentence that he has decided to impose.

Id. (internal quotation marks and citations omitted).

This court’s responsibility, in turn, is to review the district

court’s sentence for reasonableness in light of the factors set

forth in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). See Booker, 543 U.S. 264. A

sentence falling within a properly calculated guideline

range enjoys a presumption of reasonableness.

[T]he farther the judge’s sentence departs from the

guidelines sentence (in either direction—that of greater

severity, or that of greater lenity), the more compelling the justification based on factors in section 3553(a)

that the judge must offer in order to enable the court

of appeals to assess the reasonableness of the sentence imposed.

United States v. Dean, 414 F.3d 725, 729 (7th Cir. 2005). The

district court, however, need not “canvass[] the statutory

factors” in order for the sentence to be reasonable. United

States v. Castro-Juarez, 425 F.3d 430, 433 (7th Cir. 2005). In

short, “our function is to assess whether the district

court’s choice of sentence is adequately explained given
Nos. 03-3293 & 03-3294 9

the record before us.” Id. With these standards in mind,

we turn to Mr. Valle’s claims.

A.

Mr. Valle’s first argument does not focus on the reasonableness of the district court’s disposition. Instead, Mr. Valle

claims that we must vacate the district court’s sentence

because the district court’s “characterization of Mr. Valle as

a ‘career offender,’ and its labeling of him in its [Paladino

Remand] order as ‘a poster person for that label,’ is legally

and factually inaccurate” because “Mr. Valle does not meet

the qualifications for career offender status under the

guidelines.” Def.’s Request to Vacate Sentence at 9.

However, the district court never stated that Mr. Valle met

the requirements for sentencing under the career criminal

guideline, nor did the district court impose Mr. Valle’s

sentence using that guideline. Instead, at sentencing, the

district court took note of Mr. Valle’s lengthy criminal

history, his propensity to commit crimes while on probation

and supervised release and the criminal activity that was

not reflected in his criminal history. It then stated:

[T]he bottom line here is that under all of these circumstances, in my opinion I believe this man is a career

offender. I believe that the law gives me the discretion

to consider him as [a] career offender, that his—that the

totality of these circumstances fall completely outside

the heartland for the bank robbery guidelines that we

have talked about . . . .

R.22 at 38-39 (emphasis added). The court then noted that,

if Mr. Valle were “sentenced as a career offender, . . . the

guideline would be 151.” Id. at 39. The court reduced that

sentence by twelve months and sentenced Mr. Valle to 139
10 Nos. 03-3293 & 03-3294

months’ imprisonment for his crimes. Therefore, the district

court exercised its discretion, analogized Mr. Valle’s

conduct to that of a career offender and used the career

offender guideline range as a starting point for the sentencing determination. The district court did not make a mistake

of fact as to the nature of Mr. Valle’s convictions, nor did it

determine as a matter of law that Mr. Valle was a career

offender.

B.

Mr. Valle also maintains that we must vacate the sentence

imposed by the district court because, based on our preBooker case law, the district court “failed to establish a

sufficient link between the significant degree of departure

and the structure of the guidelines.” Def.’s Request to

Vacate Sentence at 11. Mr. Valle points to United States v.

Castro-Juarez, 425 F.3d at 434, in support of his position

that this court should employ pre-Booker law in evaluating upward departures.

We believe that Mr. Valle overreads our decision in

Castro-Juarez. In that case, both parties had urged us to

employ pre-Booker law in our review of the district court’s

departure. We did so, but “with the caveat that the question

before us [wa]s ultimately the reasonableness of the sentence the district court imposed, not the court’s application

of a guideline authorizing an upward departure.” Id. Later

in the opinion, we were more explicit that our pre-Booker

standards for evaluating departures are no longer binding:

We reiterate, however, that we have looked to § 4A1.3

and [pre-Booker case law] only by way of analogy, and

while [the defendant’s] sentence might not have been

sustainable as an “upward departure” before Booker,
Nos. 03-3293 & 03-3294 11

it does not follow that a term of 48 months is necessarily

unreasonable. Before Booker, we recognized that district

courts were required to sentence within the guideline

range except in unusual cases, and anything but a loose

comparison to pre-Booker departure cases would vitiate

the post-Booker discretion that sentencing courts enjoy.

All that is necessary now to sustain a sentence above the

guideline range is an adequate statement of the judge’s

reasons, consistent with section 3553(a), for thinking the

sentence that he has selected is indeed appropriate for

the particular defendant.

Id. at 436 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted);

see also United States v. Arnaout, 431 F.3d 994, 1003 (7th Cir.

2005) (noting “that the concept of ‘departures’ has been

rendered obsolete in the post-Booker world” and reiterating

that “ ’what is at stake is the reasonableness of the sentence,

not the correctness of the “departures” ’ ” (quoting United

States v. Johnson, 427 F.3d 423, 425 (7th Cir. 2005))). Consequently, the fact that the district court did not establish a

precise link between the degree of the departure and the

structure of the Guidelines, as was required pre-Booker, is

not a basis for disturbing the district court’s sentence.

C.

Finally, Mr. Valle maintains that the district court “improperly relied upon an uncorroborated statement” in the

presentence report that Mr. Valle had confessed to

the commission of nineteen additional robberies. Def.’s

Motion to Vacate Sentence at 11. Mr. Valle maintains that,

based on our pre-Booker law, the district court was required to make specific findings with respect to the reliability of this evidence before it could be used to support an

upward departure.
12 Nos. 03-3293 & 03-3294

We believe that there are several flaws in this argument.

First, it again assumes that we are bound by pre-Booker law

with respect to upward departures. As we have set forth

above, that is not the case. Second, Mr. Valle’s characterization of the statement as “uncorroborated” is not entirely

accurate. At his initial sentencing hearing, Mr. Valle was

asked whether he had reviewed the PSR and whether it was

inaccurate or incomplete; Mr. Valle responded that, “[a]s far

as the accuracy of the PSR report, Your Honor, I tend to

agree that the crimes that were committed is completely

accurate . . . .” R.20 at 12. Finally, even if there were some

doubt regarding the accuracy of the statement, the uncharged criminal conduct was only one factor in the district

court’s decision to impose the increased sentence. Among

the other factors were (1) Mr. Valle’s participation in

multiple other bank robberies and other crimes, for which

Mr. Valle was charged and had pleaded guilty, (2) Mr.

Valle’s propensity to commit crimes while on probation,

and (3) the necessity to protect the public from Mr. Valle’s

future criminal activity. Under these circumstances, we do

not believe that the district court’s partial reliance on the

statement in the PSR rendered Mr. Valle’s sentence unreasonable.

D.

Apart from the above arguments, Mr. Valle does not

contend that, evaluated against the factors set forth in 18

U.S.C. § 3553(a), his sentence was unreasonable. Nor do

we believe that such an argument would be tenable. In

its Paladino Remand Order, the district court carefully

considered the factors set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). The

court noted that the robbery and revocation at issue here

were only the most recent in a long line of serious crimes
Nos. 03-3293 & 03-3294 13

that Mr. Valle had undertaken during his adult life. Furthermore, the district court believed that it was “clear from the

Presentence Report that the Defendant is committed to

violating the law with impunity, including the commission

of the present bank robbery while on supervised release for

the earlier conviction in California for bank robbery.”

Paladino Remand Order at 3. Additionally, the court observed that, based on Mr. Valle’s history and recidivism, he

would “almost certainly continue to commit bank robberies

once released from custody in this case.” Id. at 4. Consequently, a lengthy sentence was necessary to protect the

public from this criminal activity. Based on the factors set

forth in § 3553(a), the sentence imposed was not an unreasonable one.

Conclusion

For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district

court is affirmed.

AFFIRMED

A true Copy:

Teste:

 _____________________________

Clerk of the United States Court of 

Appeals for the Seventh Circuit 

USCA-02-C-0072—8-15-06