Opinion ID: 6345596
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Hubbert’s criminal history

Text: As we noted previously, Hubbert was assigned a criminal history category of VI on two independent grounds: (1) he is a career offender, and (2) he has 35 criminal history points. Hubbert contends here as he did below that because many of his criminal history points derive from traffic offenses and other minor crimes, the criminal history category of VI substantially overstates the gravity of his criminal past. Our conclusion that Hubbert was properly treated as a career offender based on his prior convictions for possession of cocaine with the intent to distribute and aggravated assault largely renders this argument moot, because the Guidelines mandate a criminal history category of VI for any career offender. § 4B1.1(b). For the sake of completeness, however, we note that, as the district judge pointed out, even if the points assigned to Hub- bert’s traffic and other minor offenses are subtracted from the total, Hubbert would still be left with 14 points, which would suffice to place him in category VI independently of Hubbert’s career-offender status. Hubbert wanted the judge to vary downward to category IV, see U.S.S.G. § 4A1.3(b)(1) (granting sentencing judge authority to do so where defend- ant’s criminal history category overstates the gravity of his place in 2016 and early 2017 were part of an extended pattern of cocaine sales. But by themselves they do not serve to connect the 2016-17 sales to the 2011 transaction underlying the state charge. No. 20-3110 11 criminal past or the likelihood that he will re-offend); see also United States v. Corner, 598 F.3d 411 (7th Cir. 2010) (en banc) (sentencing judge has the authority to disagree with, and vary from, the career offender guideline), but we see no abuse of discretion in his decision not to do so. Hubbert has a criminal history that includes 27 convictions as an adult alone (he is presently 37 years old), a number of which are fairly serious (firearm offenses, a drug trafficking offense, aggravated battery, domestic battery, and aggravated driving under the influence of alcohol). The district judge considered this issue conscientiously and explained why he was not convinced he should vary downward. He acted within his ample discretion on this point. C. Failure to specify whether the federal sentence would run concurrently with or consecutively to any other sentence The district court did not specify whether Hubbert’s sentence in this case should run concurrently with or consecutively to the state sentence, although under 18 U.S.C. § 3584 the judge possessed the discretion to order the federal sen- tence to run concurrently with any undischarged term imposed previously. See also U.S.S.G. § 5G1.3(d). Because this issue was not raised below, our review is only for plain error. E.g., United States v. Clark, supra, 935 F.3d at 569. The express presumption under section 3584(a) is that multiple terms of imprisonment imposed at different times shall run consecutively to one another unless the court specifies otherwise, so the judge’s silence on this point allowed the presumption to dictate how the sentences will be served. In any case, it appears from the record that Hubbert had already been paroled from state custody by the time of the sentencing in this case, see R. 60 ¶ 72, so it is not clear how Hubbert was 12 No. 20-3110 prejudiced by the court’s implicit decision that his federal sentence should not run concurrently with his prior state sentence. No plain error occurred in this respect.