United States of America v. Lashawn L. Wilks

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted July 24, 2025*
Decided July 24, 2025
Before
MICHAEL B. BRENNAN, Circuit Judge
AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge
NANCY L. MALDONADO, Circuit Judge
No. 24-2698
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
LASHAWN L. WILKS,
Defendant-Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Southern District of
Illinois.
No. 19-40085-JPG-18
J. Phil Gilbert,
Judge.
O R D E R
LaShawn Wilks appeals the denial of his motion under 18 U.S.C.
§ 3582(c)(1)(A)(i), which sought compassionate release based on changed circumstances
involving the care of his daughter. Because the district court reasonably weighed the
* We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument because the briefs and
record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not
significantly aid the court. F ED. R. A PP . P. 34(a)(2)(C).
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with F ED. R. APP . P. 32.1

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No. 24-2698 Page 2
seriousness of Wilks’s offense and the potential risk he posed to the community in
denying the motion, we affirm.
In 2020, Wilks was indicted on federal drug and firearm offenses stemming from
his role in a sprawling drug-dealing conspiracy. He entered into a binding plea
agreement with the government under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(c)(1)(C),
but the district court reserved accepting the agreement until after a presentence
investigation report (PSR) was prepared. Wilks then objected to, among other things,
portions of the PSR that described contentious interactions with police: he reportedly
threatened an officer when police responded to a noise complaint at his house, he
posted videos and photos on social media with messages that police interpreted as
threatening, and a confidential informant reported that Wilks and others planned to
incite a riot and murder police officers using a cache of weapons stored in Wilks’s
basement. Reinforcing this last allegation, the PSR recounted how officers recovered
several firearms, an extended magazine, and ammunition from Wilks’s home.
Before the district court could accept the plea agreement, Wilks withdrew from
it. The next month, however, he changed course again, agreeing in another binding plea
agreement to plead guilty to two counts of using a telephone to facilitate a drug
transaction in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841 and 843(b). The court accepted the plea
agreement and, at sentencing, Wilks agreed with the district court that given the
agreed-upon sentence, all his objections to the PSR had been addressed or were moot.
So, without objection, the court adopted the facts recited in the PSR and sentenced
Wilks to a total term of 96 months’ imprisonment—within the guideline range under
the Sentencing Guidelines. Wilks did not appeal.
Ten months later Wilks filed a motion to reduce his sentence under 18 U.S.C.
§ 3582(c)(1)(A)(i). As relevant to this appeal, he noted that shortly after he was
sentenced, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services removed his
daughter from the care of her grandmother, the child’s guardian at the time, because
the state had substantiated an allegation of the grandmother’s neglect of a different
grandchild. Further, the state had not been able to find a suitable placement for his
daughter, despite attempting to place her with five different foster families. Wilks
argued that this fit the criteria of U.S.S.G. § 1B1.13(b)(3)(A), which provides that the
death or incapacitation of the caregiver of a minor child can constitute an extraordinary
and compelling circumstance warranting a sentence reduction.
The district court disagreed and denied the motion. The court first reasoned that
the situation with Wilks’s daughter did not constitute an extraordinary and compelling

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No. 24-2698 Page 3
circumstance. Rather, hardship for families is a normal consequence of imprisonment
and should not shield Wilks from the repercussions of his actions. Further, the court
concluded that the factors in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) weighed against a sentence reduction.
The court noted that Wilks had served only a small portion of his sentence and,
pointing to his troubling interactions with police outlined in the PSR, concluded that he
posed a threat to the community.
On appeal, Wilks argues that the district court erroneously relied on the portions
of the PSR describing a conspiracy to incite a riot and murder police officers because
those statements are untrue and from an unreliable source. Wilks, however, had an
opportunity to challenge those portions of the PSR before they were adopted by the
district court—indeed he initially did, but he later abandoned that challenge. He
ultimately confirmed to the district court that all his objections had been addressed or
were moot. The district court did not err by relying on the information in the PSR that
Wilks allegedly conspired to incite a riot because Wilks had withdrawn his objection to
those statements. See United States v. Duncan, 639 F.3d 764, 768 (7th Cir. 2011).
Wilks next offers alternative interpretations for the conduct described in the PSR,
arguing it does not establish he poses a threat to the community. He asserts that he did
not threaten an officer when police responded to noise complaints at his home, but
rather that he merely asserted a lawful right to prevent trespassing on his property.
And regarding his social media posts, Wilks asserts they were legitimate discourse on
social issues or were misunderstood by police. Even if these explanations are plausible,
it was also plausible that they demonstrated violent hostility to law enforcement. Where
there are “two permissible views of the evidence, the factfinder’s choice between them
cannot be clearly erroneous.” Baz v. Patterson, 100 F.4th 854, 870 (7th Cir. 2024) (quoting
Anderson v. City of Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 564, 573–74 (1985)), cert. denied, 145 S. Ct. 1049
(2025). Having permissibly concluded that Wilks participated in a conspiracy to incite a
riot and harbored violent hostility toward law enforcement, the district court was
within its discretion to conclude that a sentence reduction was unwarranted “to protect
the public from further crimes of the defendant.” 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(2)(c).
Wilks also asserts that the district court misunderstood how much of his
sentence he had served, but we see no basis to remand. Wilks seemingly measures the
time he has served using his anticipated release date while the district court measured it
using his full term of imprisonment—96 months. The court was not required to assume
Wilks would receive credit for good behavior, so it was not clear error for the court to
say that at the time of its order, in September 2024, Wilks had served less than 20

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percent of his sentence. Even then, factual inaccuracies require remand only if they
affected the court’s decision. See United States v. Pennington, 908 F.3d 234, 239 (7th Cir.
2018). And here, nothing suggests that the exact proportion of the sentence Wilks had
served was dispositive—just that he had served a relatively short time. The district
court properly considered the time Wilks had served to determine that sentence
reduction was unwarranted “to promote respect for the law.” 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(2)(A);
see United States v. Saunders, 986 F.3d 1076, 1078 (7th Cir. 2021).
Finally, Wilks points out—and the government concedes—several factual errors
in the district court’s analysis regarding his daughter’s living situation, as well as the
district court’s incorrect statement that his sentence was below the guideline range. But
neither point requires further consideration by the district court because “one good
reason for denying a compassionate-release motion suffices.” United States v. Rucker,
27 F.4th 560, 563 (7th Cir. 2022). As discussed above, the district court’s analysis of the
§ 3553(a) factors was sound, so it provides an adequate basis for denying the motion.
See United States v. Williams, 65 F.4th 343, 349 (7th Cir. 2023).
AFFIRMED

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