United States v. Taylor, 16–1019

• Decision Date: 15 August 2016
• Docket Number: No. 16–1019,16–1019
• Citation: 833 F.3d 795
• Parties: United States of America, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Terry N. Taylor, Defendant–Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

833 F.3d 795

United States of America, Plaintiff–Appellee,

v.Terry N. Taylor, Defendant–Appellant.

No. 16–1019

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued August 9, 2016

Decided August 15, 2016

Talia Bucci, Assistant U.S. Attorney, Office of the United States Attorney, Rockford, IL, for Plaintiff–Appellee.

Mark A. Byrd, Attorney, Byrd & Taylor, Rockford, IL, for Defendant–Appellant.

Before Bauer, Posne r, and Syk es, Circuit Judges.

Posner, Circuit Judge.

In 2005 the defendant had been sentenced by Judge Reinhard to 300 months in prison for federal gun-related offenses (namely for possessing a shotgun illegally), but the sentence was later determined to be invalid and in December of last year the defendant was resentenced by Judge Reinhard to 176 months, even though by that time the defendant was 54 years old, had a serious vision problem, and had been a model prisoner during the 140 months that he'd been in prison before he was resentenced. Indeed as a result of his good behavior he was credited with having served 160 months of imprisonment, so that Judge Reinhard's 176–month sentence was effectively a sentence of sixteen more months in prison. The sixteen months will end on December 16 of this year, and the defendant has already been moved from prison to a halfway house in preparation for his imminent release.

The 176 month sentence, however little it will affect the defendant's incarceration, was more than double the high end of Taylor's recalculated guidelines range of 70 to 87 months. And so, unsurprisingly, at his resentencing hearing both the probation service and the U.S. Attorney's Office recommended that he be sentenced to time served. Had the judge gone along with the recommendations, the defendant would have been released immediately.

The judge refused to take the advice of the U.S. Attorney's Office and the probation service on two grounds: the gravity of the defendant's criminal history before the offenses of which he had been convicted in 2005 (a history mostly predating the twenty-first century) and the fact that the defendant, while he had never threatened any officials, had filed complaints (and one civil suit) critical of judicial behavior by Judge Reinhard and other judges and alleging conspiracies linking judges and various other officials to grievances the defendant had suffered decades ago. Conceivably, Judge Reinhard supposed, the defendant might follow up the complaints with criminal harassment upon his release. The judge thought these two grounds predictive of the likelihood that upon release from prison the defendant will commit further crimes.

These were flimsy grounds. Most of the defendant's criminal history prior to the shotgun incident consisted of driving offenses, and he presumably can't drive any longer because of his vision problem. As for pestering federal judges (including the author of this opinion!) with seemingly groundless complaints about how he's been treated by the criminal justice system, he has a constitutional right to...