Court Opinion

ID: 9871116
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-26 20:17:59.252347+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:46:13.825208
License: Public Domain

SYKES, Circuit Judge,
with whom KANNE, Circuit Judge, joins, concurring in the judgment.
The defendant’s only argument is that the district judge failed to adequately explain his reasons for imposing a prison term of 216 months. The record shows otherwise. The judge addressed the main arguments in mitigation and then focused on the defendant’s lengthy criminal record, which began as a juvenile, continued unabated into adulthood, and includes many violent crimes (including a shooting resulting in death). The judge emphasized the serious risk of recidivism, noting that all past efforts at deterrence had failed. That’s explanation enough for the 216-month sentence — 28 months above the top of the range recommended by the Sentencing Guidelines.
The defendant acknowledges the point but challenges the sequence of the judge’s remarks. He thinks a judge must announce the sentence first and then give his reasons for it. Or if the judge has already given his reasons earlier in the hearing, he must repeat them after pronouncing sentence. Only then, the argument goes, can the parties know the link between the' judge’s rationale and the sentence. There’s no support for this argument. Judges normally explain their reasoning before pronouncing sentence. The judge followed that norm here. No repetition was required.