USA v. Jerome Coast, Jr.

FILED
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
APRIL 5, 2010
JOHN LEY
CLERK
[PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
________________________
No. 08-17116
________________________
D. C. Docket No. 08-00002-CR-4
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
versus
JEROME COAST, JR.,
a.k.a. David Green,
a.k.a. Hot Boy,
Defendant-Appellant.
________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Georgia
_________________________
(April 5, 2010)
Before BIRCH, BARKETT and KRAVITCH, Circuit Judges.
BARKETT, Circuit Judge:
Jerome Coast appeals his seventy-month sentence imposed by the district

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court following his conviction for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, in
violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). In calculating the Sentencing Guidelines range,
the court added two points to Coast’s criminal history for a prior conviction of
driving with a suspended license, pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2(c)(1) and §
4A1.2(k). At issue in this case is the interaction between those two provisions.1
Under U.S.S.G. § 4A1.1 and § 4A1.2, courts calculate criminal history
points by evaluating each of the defendant’s prior convictions according to a
variety of factors, including the length of sentence imposed for each conviction.
Section 4A1.2(c) provides that all felonies and misdemeanors, unless excluded
under subsections (c)(1) or (c)(2), are counted as part of a defendant’s criminal
history. Subsection (c)(1) excludes a number of misdemeanor offenses, including
driving with a suspended license, unless “the sentence [imposed] was a term of
probation of more than one year or a term of imprisonment of at least thirty days.”
When a defendant is sentenced to probation, but that probation is subsequently
revoked, § 4A1.2(k) instructs the court to “add the original term of imprisonment
to any term of imprisonment imposed upon revocation” when calculating criminal
history points.
Coast argues that his sentence is procedurally unreasonable because the
We review a district court’s interpretation of the Sentencing Guidelines de novo. United1
States v. Maxwell, 579 F.3d 1282, 1305 (11th Cir. 2009).
2

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court, in calculating his criminal history, erroneously included his sentence for
driving with a suspended license. Coast originally received twelve months
probation for the conviction. Had Coast been sentenced for the present offense
(possession of a firearm) prior to any probation revocation, the conviction for
driving with a suspended license would have been excluded under § 4A1.2(c)(1) as
his sentence to a probationary period of twelve months was not long enough for it
to be counted as part of his criminal history. However, after violating his2
probation, Coast was sentenced to a term of 219 days imprisonment for driving
with a suspended license. Thus, in computing his criminal history for the present
offense, the district court applied § 4A1.2(k)(1) and, pursuant thereto, calculated
the length of his sentence by adding 219 days to his original term of 0 days
imprisonment. Thus, because his total sentence for driving with a suspended
license after the revocation was greater than thirty days imprisonment, see §
4A1.2(c)(1), the court included the conviction in its criminal history calculation,
thereby adding two points to his criminal history category.3
As discussed above, under § 4A1.2(c)(1), courts count convictions such as driving with a2
suspended license only when “the sentence was a term of probation of more than one year or a term
of imprisonment of at least thirty days.”
Once a sentencing court determines, under § 4A1.2, whether a particular conviction is3
included in a defendant’s criminal history calculation, the court looks to § 4A1.1 to calculate the
number of points to assign to a particular conviction. Here, a sentence of 219 days corresponds to
two points under § 4A1.1(b).
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Coast argues that § 4A1.2(k)(1) should not be used when the original
sentence would have been excluded under § 4A1.2(c)(1). We find no support for
Coast’s contention. We have held that revocation of probation is part of a
defendant’s original sentence because “revocation of probation constitutes a
modification of the terms of the original sentence and implicates solely the
punishment initially imposed for the offense conduct underlying that sentence.”
United States v. Woods, 127 F.3d 990, 992-93 (11th Cir.1997). Furthermore, there
is nothing in the text or the commentary of the Sentencing Guidelines that indicates
an intent to insulate § 4A1.2(c) from the normal application of § 4A1.2(k).
We also reject Coast’s argument that because § 4A1.2(c) focuses on the
nature of the crime of conviction, rather than the length of the sentence, once a
conviction is excluded it cannot be revived by § 4A1.2(k). We find this argument
unpersuasive. The Guidelines could easily have excluded crimes such as driving
with a suspended license regardless of the sentence, as they do for all the crimes
listed in § 4A1.2(c)(2). Instead, the Guidelines determine whether such a
conviction will be counted in the criminal history calculation based on the length
of the sentence imposed for its violation, supporting our conclusion that § 4A1.2(k)
is applicable in this case.
Section 4A1.2(k) directly instructs a district court, when calculating criminal
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history points, to “add the original term of imprisonment to any term of
imprisonment imposed upon revocation.” The district court did exactly that, and
we find no procedural error in the sentence imposed.
AFFIRMED.
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