Court Opinion

ID: 9963025
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-04-24 15:00:56.665531+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:24:39.589338
License: Public Domain

In the

    United States Court of Appeals
                For the Seventh Circuit
                    ____________________
No. 23-1564
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
                                                  Plaintiﬀ-Appellee,
                                v.

WILLIAM CAMPBELL,
                                              Defendant-Appellant.
                    ____________________

        Appeal from the United States District Court for the
        Southern District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division.
        No. 1:21-cr-00285 — Tanya Walton Pratt, Chief Judge.
                    ____________________

    ARGUED FEBRUARY 8, 2024 — DECIDED APRIL 24, 2024
                ____________________

   Before EASTERBROOK, SCUDDER, and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges.
   ST. EVE, Circuit Judge. William Campbell stole more than
25 ﬁrearms from an Indiana home. Law enforcement ulti-
mately recovered eight of those ﬁrearms; the whereabouts of
the remaining ﬁrearms are still unknown. After Campbell
pleaded guilty to unlawfully possessing those eight ﬁrearms,
the district court sentenced him to 96 months of imprison-
ment. At the end of a lengthy explanation for the sentence im-
posed, the court remarked that the missing guns were “likely
2                                                   No. 23-1564

in the hands of other felons,” because felons “are the people
who buy stolen guns.” On appeal, Campbell asks us to ﬁnd
that this statement amounted to impermissible speculation re-
quiring us to vacate his sentence. We decline to do so.
                        I. Background
    In February 2021, William Campbell and his cousin bur-
glarized an Indiana home. The pair stole over 25 ﬁrearms, and
then sold them to another person. Oﬃcers ultimately recov-
ered eight of the stolen ﬁrearms. The rest remain unaccounted
for.
    A grand jury indicted Campbell for possessing the eight
recovered ﬁrearms as a felon in violation of 18
U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). Campbell entered a blind plea of guilty,
and the district court sentenced him the same day. In advance
of the hearing, the United States Probation Oﬃce submitted a
presentence investigation report (“PSR”) calculating an ad-
justed oﬀense level of 29 and a criminal history category of III,
resulting in an advisory Guidelines range of 108 to 120
months’ imprisonment.
    At the hearing, the district court accepted Campbell’s
guilty plea and proceeded to sentencing. After conﬁrming
that there were no objections, the court adopted the PSR and
calculated Campbell’s Guidelines range consistent with its
determinations.
    After the parties presented their sentencing arguments,
the district court announced its intention to sentence Camp-
bell to a below-Guidelines sentence of 96 months’ imprison-
ment. As required, the court explained its sentence with ref-
erence to the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factors, extensively discuss-
ing the mitigating and aggravating circumstances of
No. 23-1564                                                     3

Campbell’s case before making the following statement at is-
sue in this appeal:
       The nature and circumstances of the oﬀense also
       cannot be overlooked. Not only did he burglar-
       ize someone’s home, but more than 25 ﬁrearms
       were stolen and only eight of those ﬁrearms
       [have been recovered]. The remainder are in the
       community here in the Southern District of In-
       diana somewhere, likely in the hands of other
       felons. Those are the people who buy stolen ﬁre-
       arms because they can’t purchase them legally.
The court then imposed the sentence, which Campbell now
appeals.
                         II. Discussion
A. Standard of Review
    Campbell asserts that the district court’s ﬁnal comment in
its sentencing explanation amounts to procedural error and
requires us to vacate his sentence. Our standard for reviewing
such a procedural challenge to a district court’s remarks in
explaining a sentencing decision is well settled: we review it
de novo. United States v. Wood, 31 F.4th 593, 597 (7th Cir. 2022).
    The government nevertheless argues that we should re-
view Campbell’s challenge to the district court’s sentencing
explanation for plain error because Campbell did not contem-
poraneously object to the court’s comment at sentencing. Yet
we have been clear that “[a] district court’s explanation of its
sentencing decision, regardless of whether it precedes or fol-
lows the announcement of the sentence itself, is a ruling to
which an exception is not required.” United States v. Wilcher,
91 F.4th 864, 870 (7th Cir. 2024) (quoting Wood, 31 F.4th at 597);
4                                                            No. 23-1564

see Fed. R. Crim P. 51(b) (“If a party does not have an oppor-
tunity to object to a ruling or order, the absence of an objection
does not later prejudice that party.”). Absent a speciﬁc oppor-
tunity to object to the alleged error and a speciﬁc, aﬃrmative
indication of intent to waive any such objection, a defendant
does not waive the right to lodge a procedural challenge to a
district court’s sentencing explanation on appeal. See id. at
871.
    Campbell received no such opportunity to object here. The
issue was not addressed in the PSR, and the district court
made this remark only “moments before” imposing his sen-
tence. See Wood, 31 F.4th at 598. Afterwards, the court merely
inquired whether Campbell understood his appellate rights,
and whether counsel had recommendations regarding Camp-
bell’s incarceration location. These “generic inquir[ies]” could
not have put Campbell “on notice that he must do anything
further to preserve” the argument he now raises on appeal.
See Wilcher, 91 F.4th at 870–71. 1 We review Campbell’s proce-
dural challenge de novo.
B. Sentencing Remarks
    We turn to Campbell’s only argument on appeal: that the
district court procedurally erred by relying on speculative
and unsupported information when imposing his sentence.

    1 Nor are we persuaded that Campbell had an opportunity to object

earlier in the sentencing hearing after the government discussed “the
problem that we have with ﬁrearms circulating out into the open where it
starts with a legal owner, but then, gets stolen by someone” in its sentenc-
ing argument. Campbell challenges the district court’s statements—not
the government’s—and those statements were “created by the district
court’s ruling itself.” Wood, 31 F.4th at 598.
No. 23-1564                                                                5

    Criminal defendants have a right to be sentenced based on
accurate information. Wood, 31 F.4th at 599. “Sentencing
judges necessarily have ‘discretion to draw conclusions about
the testimony given and evidence introduced at sentencing,’
but ‘due process requires that sentencing determinations be
based on reliable evidence, not speculation or unfounded al-
legations.’” United States v. Bradley, 628 F.3d 394, 400 (7th Cir.
2010) (quoting United States v. England, 555 F.3d 616, 622 (7th
Cir. 2009)). Accordingly, a district court procedurally errs
when it “relie[s] on unreliable or inaccurate information in
making its sentencing decision.” England, 555 F.3d at 622. On
appeal, a defendant must show “that the sentencing court re-
lied on the misinformation in passing sentence.” United States
v. Propst, 959 F.3d 298, 304 (7th Cir. 2020) (emphasis added)
(quoting United States ex rel. Welch v. Lane, 738 F.2d 863, 865
(7th Cir. 1984)). 2
    Pointing to the very last sentences of the district court’s
sentencing explanation, Campbell argues that the district
court impermissibly reached and relied on two speculative
conclusions when imposing his sentence: (1) the location of
the missing ﬁrearms (“The remainder are in the community
here in the Southern District of Indiana somewhere….”); and
(2) the likely possessors of the ﬁrearms (“[They are] likely in
the hands of other felons. Those are the people who buy sto-
len ﬁrearms because they can’t purchase them legally.”).

    2 The parties dispute at length whether a defendant’s burden diﬀers

where the defendant alleges that a district court relied on inaccurate as op-
posed to speculative information. To the extent our caselaw draws such a
distinction, it is irrelevant here: in either case a defendant must show at
the threshold that a district court relied on the challenged information.
6                                                    No. 23-1564

    When viewing the sentencing transcript as a whole, we are
unpersuaded that the district court improperly relied on ei-
ther of these statements—which appear in a passing comment
at the very end of sentencing—in imposing Campbell’s sen-
tence. See United States v. Hendrix, 74 F.4th 859, 870 (7th Cir.
2023). The comment came after a lengthy and robust explana-
tion of the sentencing decision. In that explanation, the court
appropriately assessed the § 3553(a) factors, including the
mitigating and aggravating circumstances of Campbell’s case.
See United States v. Saldana-Gonzalez, 70 F.4th 981, 985 (7th Cir.
2023) (aﬃrming a defendant’s sentence where, “[t]aken as a
whole, the sentencing transcript demonstrate[d] that the court
based its sentence on considerations authorized by the law”
(quoting United States v. Wilson, 383 F. App’x 554, 557 (7th Cir.
2010)). The court’s evaluation of these factors, not its ﬁnal
passing comment, underpinned Campbell’s sentence.
    True, the court made the disputed remarks after stating
that “the nature and circumstances of the oﬀense also cannot
be overlooked.” But, reading the court’s statement in context,
the court was referring to the fact that Campbell “burglar-
ize[d] someone’s home,” and stole “more than 25 ﬁrearms,”
of which “only eight” were recovered. The court then ex-
pounded on the signiﬁcance of this conduct with the disputed
remarks. It is clear that the court’s concern was not that the
ﬁrearms were, as a factual matter, located in the Southern Dis-
trict of Indiana or, as a factual matter, in the hands of felons.
Rather, the court’s valid concern was that these ﬁrearms are
now unaccounted for, somewhere in the public, where au-
thorities cannot track their owners and whereabouts. That
these weapons could end up in the hands of felons and could
be used to commit felonies was the kind of “commonsense in-
ference[]” that “our precedents allow a district court great
No. 23-1564                                                      7

leeway to make.” United States v. Moody, 915 F.3d 425, 431 (7th
Cir. 2019); see also United States v. Brown, 880 F.3d 399, 407 (7th
Cir. 2018) (aﬃrming a sentence where “the district court’s
statements … [were] not unfounded assumptions but [were]
grounded in caselaw, in the record, and in common sense”).
    In short, a review of the entire sentencing transcript pro-
vides us no reason to believe that the district court intended
its ﬁnal remarks at Campbell’s sentencing to serve as “literal
statement[s] of fact to support the sentence imposed.” See
United States v. Oliver, 873 F.3d 601, 609 (7th Cir. 2017). Ac-
cordingly, Campbell has failed to show that the district court
relied on speculative or inaccurate information in imposing
his sentence.
                         *      *       *
   The judgment of the district court is
                                                        AFFIRMED.