FILED

U.S. COURT OF APPEALS

ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

 APRIL 5, 2010

JOHN LEY

CLERK

[PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

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No. 08-17116

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D. C. Docket No. 08-00002-CR-4

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

versus

JEROME COAST, JR.,

a.k.a. David Green,

a.k.a. Hot Boy,

Defendant-Appellant.

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Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of Georgia

_________________________

(April 5, 2010)

Before BIRCH, BARKETT and KRAVITCH, Circuit Judges.

BARKETT, Circuit Judge:

Jerome Coast appeals his seventy-month sentence imposed by the district
court following his conviction for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, in

violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). In calculating the Sentencing Guidelines range,

the court added two points to Coast’s criminal history for a prior conviction of

driving with a suspended license, pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2(c)(1) and §

4A1.2(k). At issue in this case is the interaction between those two provisions.

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Under U.S.S.G. § 4A1.1 and § 4A1.2, courts calculate criminal history

points by evaluating each of the defendant’s prior convictions according to a

variety of factors, including the length of sentence imposed for each conviction.

Section 4A1.2(c) provides that all felonies and misdemeanors, unless excluded

under subsections (c)(1) or (c)(2), are counted as part of a defendant’s criminal

history. Subsection (c)(1) excludes a number of misdemeanor offenses, including

driving with a suspended license, unless “the sentence [imposed] was a term of

probation of more than one year or a term of imprisonment of at least thirty days.”

When a defendant is sentenced to probation, but that probation is subsequently

revoked, § 4A1.2(k) instructs the court to “add the original term of imprisonment

to any term of imprisonment imposed upon revocation” when calculating criminal

history points.

Coast argues that his sentence is procedurally unreasonable because the

 We review a district court’s interpretation of the Sentencing Guidelines de novo. United 1

States v. Maxwell, 579 F.3d 1282, 1305 (11th Cir. 2009).

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court, in calculating his criminal history, erroneously included his sentence for

driving with a suspended license. Coast originally received twelve months

probation for the conviction. Had Coast been sentenced for the present offense

(possession of a firearm) prior to any probation revocation, the conviction for

driving with a suspended license would have been excluded under § 4A1.2(c)(1) as

his sentence to a probationary period of twelve months was not long enough for it

to be counted as part of his criminal history. However, after violating his

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probation, Coast was sentenced to a term of 219 days imprisonment for driving

with a suspended license. Thus, in computing his criminal history for the present

offense, the district court applied § 4A1.2(k)(1) and, pursuant thereto, calculated

the length of his sentence by adding 219 days to his original term of 0 days

imprisonment. Thus, because his total sentence for driving with a suspended

license after the revocation was greater than thirty days imprisonment, see §

4A1.2(c)(1), the court included the conviction in its criminal history calculation,

thereby adding two points to his criminal history category.

3

As discussed above, under § 4A1.2(c)(1), courts count convictions such as driving with a 2

suspended license only when “the sentence was a term of probation of more than one year or a term

of imprisonment of at least thirty days.”

Once a sentencing court determines, under § 4A1.2, whether a particular conviction is 3

included in a defendant’s criminal history calculation, the court looks to § 4A1.1 to calculate the

number of points to assign to a particular conviction. Here, a sentence of 219 days corresponds to

two points under § 4A1.1(b). 

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Coast argues that § 4A1.2(k)(1) should not be used when the original

sentence would have been excluded under § 4A1.2(c)(1). We find no support for

Coast’s contention. We have held that revocation of probation is part of a

defendant’s original sentence because “revocation of probation constitutes a

modification of the terms of the original sentence and implicates solely the

punishment initially imposed for the offense conduct underlying that sentence.”

United States v. Woods, 127 F.3d 990, 992-93 (11th Cir.1997). Furthermore, there

is nothing in the text or the commentary of the Sentencing Guidelines that indicates

an intent to insulate § 4A1.2(c) from the normal application of § 4A1.2(k).

We also reject Coast’s argument that because § 4A1.2(c) focuses on the

nature of the crime of conviction, rather than the length of the sentence, once a

conviction is excluded it cannot be revived by § 4A1.2(k). We find this argument

unpersuasive. The Guidelines could easily have excluded crimes such as driving

with a suspended license regardless of the sentence, as they do for all the crimes

listed in § 4A1.2(c)(2). Instead, the Guidelines determine whether such a

conviction will be counted in the criminal history calculation based on the length

of the sentence imposed for its violation, supporting our conclusion that § 4A1.2(k)

is applicable in this case.

Section 4A1.2(k) directly instructs a district court, when calculating criminal

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history points, to “add the original term of imprisonment to any term of

imprisonment imposed upon revocation.” The district court did exactly that, and

we find no procedural error in the sentence imposed.

AFFIRMED.

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