Sentencing; Procedural reasonableness; The 18 USC § 3553(a) factors; Consideration of a defendant’s “future dangerousness” based on mental health issues; United States v Moses

The court held that the district court did not improperly rely on defendant-Adams’s mental health status as the basis for its upward variance in sentencing him. Adams, who has an extensive history of mental health issues, was found unfit to stand trial on his firearm charge. After treatment, he pled guilty and was sentenced to prison and supervised release. After his release from prison, he violated his supervised release by missing scheduled drug tests, losing his job, and not allowing for home visits. After another attempt at treatment, he again violated the terms of his release. He did not report to probation, and was arrested for assault and breaking and entering. A copy of a competency evaluation was considered during sentencing that documented his “violent ideations,” and the government pointed out “the violent nature of” his assault charge. The district court imposed “an above-Guidelines sentence of 24 months in prison—the statutory maximum and nearly double the high end of the Guidelines range.” On appeal, he alleged that its upward variance was procedurally unreasonable. He claimed that it “inappropriately used [his] mental illness as an aggravating sentencing factor instead of a mitigating one, choosing a longer sentence to account for the fact that the public needed to be protected from Adams because of his mental illness.” The court noted that he raised “important questions about whether district courts may vary a sentence upwards to account for the risk of danger a defendant may pose to the community because of his mental health issues.” But it affirmed the district court’s decision “on a different basis.” Its review of the sentencing transcript indicated that “the district court based its sentence on Adams’s conduct, including his choice to leave the halfway house early, his criminal activity during the year in which he absconded, and the failure of its previous interventions to prevent him from committing further offenses.” It explained that even if this conduct may have arisen from his mental illness, “a district court may rely on a defendant’s past conduct in determining the appropriate sentence.” When sentencing Adams, the district court reviewed the § 3553(a) factors, and “appeared to have explained that it felt it needed to impose a longer sentence despite Adams’s mental health, not because of it, and that Adams’s mental health concerns could no longer be treated as mitigating against jail time considering his flagrant violations of his supervised release conditions. That decision was based on permissible factors.” The court found the district court’s “passing references to the competency evaluation” did not form the basis of its sentencing decision.