Opinion ID: 1212381
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The district court's sentence was reasonable.

Text: Liddell also claims that his sentence of 240 months' imprisonment is unreasonable, even though it was 22 months below the career offender guideline range of 262-327 months. He reasons that because his prison term doubled upon resentencing, the district court put too much emphasis on the new guideline range in arriving at the new sentence. When calculating a sentence, a district court first calculates the proper range under the sentencing guidelines. It then considers that guideline range in addition to any of the other relevant sentencing factors under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) before arriving at the appropriate sentence. See United States v. Dean, 414 F.3d 725, 728-30 (7th Cir.2005). As we discussed above, the court properly determined that Liddell was a career offender and correctly arrived at a sentencing range of 262-327 months. So the sole question for us to decide is whether the below-guideline sentence that Liddell received was reasonable. A sentence within a properly calculated guideline range is presumptively reasonable, so it follows that a below-guideline sentence is also presumptively reasonable against an attack by a defendant claiming that the sentence is too high. See Rita, 127 S.Ct. at 2462-63; United States v. Mykytiuk, 415 F.3d 606, 608 (7th Cir.2005). Liddell has not come close to rebutting that presumption here. See United States v. George, 403 F.3d 470, 473 (7th Cir.2005) (It is hard to conceive of below-range sentences that would be unreasonably high.). Although Liddell's 240 month sentence is double what it was previously, the fact remains that on both occasions the district court sentenced him lenientlyfirst at the mandatory statutory minimum and then well below the applicable guideline range. And as the government notes, there is little evidence that the court put too much weight on the guidelines given that Liddell received a below-guideline sentence. Perhaps things would have been different if the court had resentenced Liddell near the top of the new guideline range, but that is a matter for another day and another case.