Opinion ID: 217540
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Ms. Thompson’s Contentions

Text: Ms. Thompson first contends that criminal-history category III over-represents her modest criminal history, in light of the circumstances of her life at the time she committed her previous offenses and the minimal harm she caused. As she did in the district court, she argues that Mr. Aguilar was the mastermind behind her 2002 felony false-identification conviction. She further -10- asserts that all six of her criminal-history points were based upon the same conduct, namely the issuance of seven small insufficient-funds checks in 2002, at a time when she was experiencing financial hardship due to Mr. Aguilar’s incarceration. She repeats the same arguments she made in the district court, tying the four criminal-history points assessed for her 2002 and 2004 convictions to her spate of bad checks. She now also contends that the bad checks effectively accounted for the two additional “recency” points she received as well. 3 According to Ms. Thompson, were it not for the bad checks, her probation would not have been revoked on her 2002 conviction, she would not have received a one-year prison sentence beginning in 2004, and she would not have been released from prison only a short time before commencing the fraudulent oil-and-gas scheme in 2006. Thus, she maintains that the bad checks were unfairly triple-counted in calculating her criminal-history score, making her sentence at the bottom of the resulting Guidelines range substantively unreasonable. Ms. Thompson contends it would be reasonable to assess her two points for her 2002 conviction, or two points for her 2004 conviction, or two 3 Ms. Thompson concedes on appeal that the district court’s ruling on the recency-points issue under USSG § 4A1.1(e) (2009) “well may have been correct,” but she contends that it “missed the bigger picture” because the recency of the instant offense was “inextricably connected” to her bad checks offenses. Aplt. Opening Br. at 18 n.4. -11- points for recency, but the district court’s triple-counting of minor bad-check offenses was manifestly unreasonable. Ms. Thompson argues further that the district court gave insufficient consideration to the nature and seriousness of the instant offense and her history and characteristics. She contends there is substantial and compelling evidence that Mr. Aguilar dominated and controlled her during a time when she was suffering from mental and emotional impairments—that he was both the mastermind of the oil-and-gas scheme and the puppet master to her minion role in the offense. Based on the totality of the circumstances, Ms. Thompson contends that her 57-month sentence amounts to an abuse of discretion.