Opinion ID: 4585085
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Defendant and His Crimes and Punishment

Text: A. The Defendant’s Federal Crimes and Original Sentence In 2015, defendant Lindani Mzembe and two other men kidnapped another man, shot him, beat him (including beating his head with at least one handgun), and held him for ransom. When they thought their victim’s injuries might prove fatal, Mzembe and the others abandoned him in an alley, bleeding and blindfolded with duct tape. Separate juries in the Northern District of Indiana found the three men guilty of multiple federal crimes. The district court imposed heavy sentences: forty-four years in prison for Mzembe, ﬁfty-four years and eight months for Derek Fields, and thirty-seven years for Ivan Brazier. All three appealed. In those appeals, intervening changes in law required us to vacate Mzembe’s and Fields’s convictions under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) for discharging a ﬁrearm in a crime of No. 20-1265 3 violence. United States v. Brazier, 933 F.3d 796, 802 (7th Cir. 2019). In that opinion, we aﬃrmed all other convictions and Brazier’s sentence, but we remanded for resentencing of Mzembe and Fields on the convictions that still stood. Upon remand, Fields was resentenced to forty-three years in prison and did not appeal. B. The Intervening State Convictions and Sentence All issues in this second appeal by Mzembe arise from an unexpected development between Mzembe’s two federal sentencing hearings. In between, Mzembe was convicted in an Indiana state court for other serious and violent crimes that he had committed before the kidnapping. In 2014, Mzembe and another man committed a brutal home invasion, beating and terrorizing a family to rob them of money and property. Frustrated because they could not ﬁnd enough valuables to steal, Mzembe and the other robber forced the entire family to kneel and face a couch, with a gun aimed at the pregnant wife and mother. At some point, the husband and father reached for the gun and struggled with the robbers. Mzembe somehow managed to get away before the police arrived. The other robber was caught quickly, though, and he identiﬁed Mzembe as his partner in the crimes. Mzembe v. State, 113 N.E.3d 812 (Ind. App. 2018) (mem.) (aﬃrming convictions and sentence). The judge in the state case imposed a sentence of sixty-two years, consisting of sixteen years for robbery resulting in bodily injury, thirty years for burglary armed with a deadly weapon, and sixteen years for robbery by putting someone in fear resulting in bodily injury, all consecutive to each other. Knowing that Mzembe had already been sentenced to forty- 4 No. 20-1265 four years in federal prison, the judge also ordered the state sentence to run consecutive to the original federal sentence. By the time Mzembe was ready for resentencing in federal court, the state sentence was ﬁnal. C. Resentencing in Federal Court After we set aside Mzembe’s ﬁrearm conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), he still stood convicted of kidnapping (18 U.S.C. § 1201), making a ransom demand (18 U.S.C. § 875(a)), and being a felon in possession of a ﬁrearm (18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1)). Under the Sentencing Guidelines, he qualiﬁed for criminal history category VI, and his total oﬀense level worked out to level forty-four, which is literally oﬀ the chart, as the federal Sentencing Guidelines top out at level fortythree. At that level, the Guidelines advise a life sentence even for an oﬀender in criminal history category I, let alone for someone like Mzembe in category VI. The parties agree that the guideline range for Mzembe’s federal crimes upon resentencing was life in prison. Judge Miller resolved all guideline issues and other objec- tions to the presentence report and heard the parties’ presentations on the statutory factors under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), as well as Mzembe’s allocution. The government recommended a new federal sentence of 480 months (forty years). Mzembe proposed a federal sentence of 408 months (thirty-four years). Mzembe also argued that his state sentence was so heavy that the federal sentence should run concurrently with it. The government argued that the court did not have the power or discretion to impose a sentence concurrent with the state sentence, and that the sentences should be consecutive in any event. Judge Miller imposed a new federal sentence of thirty- No. 20-1265 5 six years, and he explained it both orally and in a written opinion, pursuant to his usual and helpful practice. The judge de- nied Mzembe’s request for concurrent sentences and ordered the newly reduced federal sentence to run consecutively, consistent with the state judge’s intervening sentencing decision. There were, so to speak, a lot of moving parts in the resentencing. The guideline range had changed for several reasons, rising to life in prison on the federal crimes alone. The court addressed the principal defense arguments, including the evidence that co-defendant Fields had coerced Mzembe to commit crimes with him by breaking his jaw two weeks before the kidnapping. (Apparently Mzembe had owed money to Fields and could not pay it.) The court rejected a minor-role adjustment under U.S.S.G. § 3B1.2 but said that a below-guideline sentence would be appropriate for the federal crimes, particularly in light of the coercion by Fields, even though, as the court also pointed out, once Mzembe had joined in, he had participated enthusiastically in the kidnapping and beating and had brought a gun to commit those crimes. The judge also considered the evidence of Mzembe’s eﬀorts at rehabilitation in prison. These included earning his GED degree, going through alcohol- and drug-abuse treatment, turning to religion, and for the ﬁrst time expressing remorse in court for what happened to the man who was kidnapped, beaten, and shot. After announcing the proposed federal sentence, the judge turned to the issue with the biggest practical impact, which was whether to make the new federal sentence concurrent with or consecutive to the intervening state sentence, in whole or in part. The judge’s oral and written remarks on that sub- ject were brief—the defense argues much too brief—coming 6 No. 20-1265 right after the explanation of the sentence for the federal of-