Opinion ID: 2995646
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Refusal to Depart Downward for

Text: Acceptance of Responsibility Finally, Johnson argues that the district court abused its discretion by not reducing Johnson’s criminal history level because the three-point enhancement for traffic supervision overstated Johnson’s criminal history. When Johnson initially accepted the government’s plea agreement, both the government and the defendant calculated four criminal history points, resulting in criminal history category III. However, the probation officer prepared a pre-sentence report that suggested enhancements for driving on a revoked license (adding one point) and for committing the current offense while on traffic supervision (adding two points). These enhancements increased Johnson’s criminal history category to IV and raised the appropriate sentencing range. Johnson moved the district court to depart downward, arguing that the additional points overstated his criminal history. Although the district court was sympathetic to Johnson’s argument, it refused to depart, stating: I don’t think it overstates the seriousness of the offense to say that someone who has violated the driving laws and lost their license and then is caught driving receives a term of supervised release, and, therefore, that is a criminal justice sentence of sorts, and one of the conditions, at least in terms of federal law, is that if you commit a crime while under that sentence, you are going to be held responsible for that as if you were under supervision for some other offense. Accordingly, the district court accepted the recommendations of the PSR. A defendant who contests a district court’s refusal to depart downward faces an uphill battle because we review such determinations only in the narrowest circumstances. A defendant can challenge the district court’s departure decisions only if he shows that the district court misunderstood or misapplied the law, because when a district court recognizes its authority to depart under the guidelines but in an exercise of its discretion chooses not to do so, an appellate court lacks jurisdiction to review that decision. United States v. Thomas, 181 F.3d 870, 873 (7th Cir. 1999); United States v. Wilson, 134 F.3d 855, 869-70 (7th Cir. 1998). Nothing in the district court’s comments or in John son’s brief suggests that the court misunderstood its discretion to depart downward. As a result, we lack jurisdiction to consider the merits of Johnson’s claim, United States v. Atkinson, 259 F.3d 648, 653 (7th Cir. 2001), and we affirm the district court’s decision not to depart downward.