{"id":3559,"date":"2009-01-31T11:36:48","date_gmt":"2009-01-31T16:36:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=3559"},"modified":"2009-01-31T11:36:48","modified_gmt":"2009-01-31T16:36:48","slug":"seventh-circuit-week-in-review-a-sentencing-remand-based-on-mental-disability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/01\/seventh-circuit-week-in-review-a-sentencing-remand-based-on-mental-disability\/","title":{"rendered":"Seventh Circuit Week in Review: A Sentencing Remand Based on Mental Disability"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Seventh Circuit had only one new opinion in a criminal case last week.\u00a0 United States v. Williams <\/a><\/em>(No. 07-1573) arose from a series of bank robberies.\u00a0 Four codefendants were convicted and sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment, ranging from 221 months to life.\u00a0 All four defendants appealed on a variety of different issues, although only one, Clinton Williams,\u00a0obtained any relief.\u00a0\u00a0Williams was sentenced to 552 months’ imprisonment, notwithstanding\u00a0evidence that he suffered from significant mental impairments and\u00a0had become involved in the robberies only as a result of manipulation by his brother.\u00a0 In light of this mitigating\u00a0evidence, which was not seriously contested by the government,\u00a0Williams’ lawyer argued for a sentence at the\u00a0low end of the 519- to 552-month guidelines range.\u00a0 However, the sentencing judge did not squarely address this evidence.\u00a0 Instead, the judge selected a sentence at the top of the range in light of a report by an expert who evaluated Williams\u00a0and found that\u00a0he was exaggerating his disability.<\/p>\n

The Seventh Circuit (per Judge Williams) vacated and remanded for resentencing.\u00a0 As the court sensibly observed, there is no logical inconsistency between\u00a0the evidence\u00a0that Williams suffered from a mental disability and the observation that he was exaggerating the disability.\u00a0 Indeed, the very\u00a0expert who made the obervation estimated Williams’ IQ at 72, which is considered borderline mentally retarded.\u00a0 The sentencing judge was required to address this and the other evidence of mental disability, as well as the related claim that Williams’ diminished capacity made him susceptible to manipulation by his brother.<\/p>\n

Williams <\/em>thus joins an interesting line of recent Seventh Circuit cases that require sentencing judges to explain why they reject defendants’ arguments for leniency.\u00a0 I have a forthcoming article <\/a>about these cases in the Florida State Law Review.<\/em>\u00a0 As I\u00a0explain in the article, there are good procedural justice reasons to favor the Seventh Circuit approach.\u00a0 It is unfortunate that other circuits have not adopted as robust an explanation requirement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Seventh Circuit had only one new opinion in a criminal case last week.\u00a0 United States v. Williams (No. 07-1573) arose from a series of bank robberies.\u00a0 Four codefendants were convicted and sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment, ranging from 221 months to life.\u00a0 All four defendants appealed on a variety of different issues, although […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,28,74,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal-justice","category-criminal-law-process","category-federal-sentencing","category-seventh-circuit","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}