Opinion ID: 2976607
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Hall’s Sentence is Substantively Reasonable

Text: Hall next argues that his sentence was substantively unreasonable because the district judge failed to address all the relevant factors under Section 3553(a). In particular he says that the district judge failed to pay sufficient attention to Section 3553(a)(1), which requires judges to 13 consider “the nature and circumstances of the offense and the history and characteristics of the defendant” as well as Section 3553(a)(6), which requires judges to “consider . . . the need to avoid unwarranted sentence disparities among defendants with similar records who have been found guilty of similar conduct.”5 Those arguments fail as well. Our careful review of the material presented to the district court as well as the transcript of the sentencing hearing reveals that the district judge did consider each of the relevant factors. Indeed, several pages of the transcript were devoted to explaining why the district judge remained unpersuaded by Hall’s argument that he should receive a sentence more akin to that imposed on his co-defendant, concluding with this statement: The Court is aware of the difference between . . . the guideline range of defendant Williams and the range that is before the Court today with respect to defendant Hall. However, the Court finds that that disparity arises from the choices and behaviors of each of the defendants both before and after the tragic incident of March 2005, both with respect to criminal history and with respect to substantial assistance which led to the government’s [5K1.1] motion under the sentencing scheme with respect to defendant Williams . . . . [T]he Court must consider those choices and the respective behavior in imposing [the] sentence in this case. Further substantive discussion, included in the earlier-quoted excerpt from the sentencing hearing transcript, dealt with the nature and circumstances surrounding the crime as well as Hall’s personal history and characteristics (including his DUI and license convictions for events that occurred after the tragic incident that led to his conviction). In short, it cannot be said that the district judge overlooked either Section 3553(a)(1) or Section 3553(a)(6), as Hall alleges. 5 Hall argues as well that his sentence was substantively unreasonable because the district judge gave the Guidelines range an unreasonable amount of weight and because he failed to explain properly his reasons for the sentence imposed. Those issues have been dealt with in the preceding Section and will not be reexamined here. Although Hall further urges that his sentence was substantively unreasonable because the district judge “based the sentence on impermissible factors,” he never identifies any such factor. That argument falls of its own weight. 14 Much like the defendant in Ming Liou, Hall would have us conclude that the district court erred substantively by not imposing a lesser sentence simply because other courts, when faced with arguably similar crimes, chose to impose more lenient sentences that Hall believes were still “adequate to serve the interests of deterrence and ‘just punishment’” (491 F.3d at 340). But as Ming Liou, id. explained, that “argument misapprehends the post-Booker role of appellate courts,” for “[w]hile in the abstract we might agree that [a lesser sentence] could serve the relevant interests, it is for the district court to determine, in the first instance, what sentence is ‘sufficient, but not greater than necessary’ to meet these interests.” Put simply, the district judge adequately considered the relevant factors under Section 3553(a), and so Hall has not successfully rebutted the presumption that his within-Guidelines sentence is substantively reasonable. V. Hall’s Criminal History Score Was Correctly Calculated Finally, Hall urges that the district judge calculated his criminal history score incorrectly because the time Hall spent in DCS custody following his three juvenile adjudications did not qualify as periods of “confinement” for purposes of Section 4A1.2(d)(2)(A) or as periods of “imprisonment” for purposes of Section 4A1.1(e). But Hall’s argument--as he himself concedes- -is foreclosed by a steady stream of our caselaw that began with the per curiam opinion in United States v. Kirby, 893 F.2d 867, 868 (6th Cir. 1990). Under Section 4A1.2(d)(2)(A) two points are added to a defendant’s criminal history score “for each . . . juvenile sentence to confinement of at least sixty days if the defendant was released from such confinement within five years of his commencement of the instant offense” (emphasis added). Under Section 4A1.1.(e), two points are added “if the defendant committed 15 the instant offense less than two years after release from imprisonment” (emphasis added). Kirby, 893 F.2d at 868 held that the district judge did not err when, in calculating a defendant’s criminal history score, he accounted for the defendant’s prior juvenile adjudication and concomitant seven-month commitment to the custody of the Kentucky Cabinet for Human Resources and thus added four points under the two quoted Guideline sections. In so concluding, Kirby specifically rejected the defendant’s argument that “an adjudication of delinquency by a juvenile court cannot be deemed a conviction” and thus cannot trigger the application of either Sections 4A1.2(d)(2)(A) or 4A1.1.(e) (id.). We have never wavered from Kirby (see, e.g., United States v. Hanley, 906 F.2d 1116, 1120 (6th Cir. 1990); United States v. Williams, 176 F.3d 301, 311-12 (6th Cir. 1999); Phillips v. United States, 238 Fed. Appx. 89, 94 (6th Cir. 2007), and our panel is in no position to do so today. Hall urges us to use the approach employed in United States v. Gener, No. 04 CR 42317(RWS), 2005 WL 2838984, at  (S.D. N.Y. Oct. 26, 2005), where the sentencing judge did not give the defendant two criminal history points under Section 4A1.2(d)(2)(A) for his prior juvenile adjudication because, the judge concluded, the defendant was sentenced to a “limited secure facility,” not a “prison-like facility,” and because “the length of confinement was not directly related to the gravity of the offense but rather was governed by his family circumstances and his special personal needs.” We cannot of course follow an unpublished district court decision--and one from another circuit at that--in preference to our own longstanding circuit caselaw. We hold that the sentencing judge correctly accounted for Hall’s prior juvenile adjudications and periods of confinement with DCS when calculating his criminal history score as a necessary predicate to determining his final sentence. 16