Opinion ID: 4317843
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Shelton’s Criminal History Points

Text: Next, Shelton challenges the court’s decision to include three criminal history points for a prior burglary conviction. “Under U.S.S.G. § 4A1.1(a), a criminal defendant is assigned Nos. 17-3084, 17-3127, 17-3396, 17-3559 17 three criminal history points for each prior sentence of imprisonment exceeding thirteen months.” United States v. MorenoPadilla, 602 F.3d 802, 807 (7th Cir. 2010). “The temporal reach of U.S.S.G. § 4A1.1(a) is limited to prior sentences imposed or served within ﬁfteen years of the defendant’s commencement of the oﬀense for which he or she is presently being sentenced.” Id. (citing U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2(e)(1)). Criminal history points might also be added if a defendant’s probation on a prior conviction “was revoked and … he was re-imprisoned based on that revocation.” United States v. Marks, 864 F.3d 575, 579 (7th Cir. 2017). In such a situation, the court “add[s] the original term of imprisonment to any term of imprisonment imposed upon revocation,” and “[f]or the purposes of determining the applicable time period,” the court uses “the date of last release from incarceration on such sentence.” U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2(k). If “at the time of revocation another sentence was imposed for a new criminal conviction, that conviction [is] computed separately from the sentence imposed for the revocation.” Id. § 4A1.2 cmt. n.11. At the same time, “[w]here a revocation applies to multiple sentences, and such sentences are counted separately under § 4A1.2(a)(2),” criminal history points are added only for “the term of imprisonment imposed upon revocation to the sentence that will result in the greatest increase in criminal history points.” Id. A brief refresher of the relevant facts: Shelton was convicted of three state burglaries in 1999 and 2000. According to the PSR, he was sentenced to three years’ probation and twenty-nine days’ imprisonment for a March 8, 1999 conviction and three years’ probation for a July 28, 1999 conviction. When he was convicted for the third burglary on May 23, 2000, he also violated the terms of his probation for the ﬁrst 18 Nos. 17-3084, 17-3127, 17-3396, 17-3559 two burglaries. For each of the three convictions, he was sentenced to “4 years of custody in the IDOC, concurrent with [the other case numbers].” Based on this information, the district court concluded that the state court imposed three separate custodial sentences. Pursuant to § 4A1.2(a), the court imposed three criminal history points for the May 2000 conviction, and pursuant to § 4A1.2(k), it imposed three criminal history points for the March 1999 conviction. Shelton argues the court erred because there is no evidence in the record suggesting the state court intended to impose separate terms of imprisonment for each prior burglary. Rather, he asserts that “the state court simply intended … to indicate that the periods of probation previously imposed … would be, as a practical matter, revoked and terminated since defendant would be serving a 4-year sentence for the [third] burglary conviction.” The only mention of these prior burglaries in the record is made in the PSR. Shelton did not object to the PSR’s description of the prior burglaries, and because there was no “evidentiary presentation to suggest that what is reported … in the [PSR] is inaccurate,” the court accepted the PSR’s characterization. If the PSR’s account is accurate, the court did not err. In United States v. Eubanks, a defendant was charged with armed robbery, and as a result, his probation for a prior ﬁrearm theft conviction was revoked. 593 F.3d 645, 654 (7th Cir. 2010). We emphasized that the fact that “the sentence for the armed robbery oﬀenses was to run ‘concurrent’ mean[s] that the sentence for the armed robbery oﬀenses was a diﬀerent oﬀense from the revocation of probation/theft of the ﬁrearm sentence.” Id. at 654 n.1. We thus held that “[t]he district court correctly computed [the armed robbery] oﬀense separate Nos. 17-3084, 17-3127, 17-3396, 17-3559 19 from the revocation oﬀense for the purpose of criminal history points.” Id. at 654; see also United States v. Green, 458 F. App’x 568, 569 (7th Cir. 2012) (“[R]evocations are always counted separately from convictions in criminal history calculations.”); United States v. Brewster, 390 F. App’x 557, 560 (7th Cir. 2010) (same). 6 In any event, even if the district court’s reliance on the PSR was erroneous, any error in calculating Shelton’s criminal history score was harmless. The district court imposed a belowGuidelines term of imprisonment, and it made an “unequivocal statement … that it would have imposed the same sentence” even if it improperly calculated criminal history points. See United States v. Hines-Flagg, 789 F.3d 751, 757 (7th Cir. 2015). At the conclusion of Shelton’s sentencing hearing, the court stated clearly: “[W]hether there are some arbitrary points added or taken away from Mr. Shelton’s criminal history score does not change my overall analysis of the 3553(a) factors.”