United States of America v. Andrew J. Johnston

In the
United States Court of Appeals
for the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 21-2081
U NITED S TATES OF A MERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
A NDREW J. JOHNSTON ,
Defendant-Appellant.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
No. 17 CR 517-1 — Rebecca R. Pallmeyer, Judge.
____________________
A RGUED M ARCH 29, 2023 — DECIDED O CTOBER 29, 2025
____________________
Before BRENNAN , Chief Judge, and R OVNER and S YKES ,
Circuit Judges.
S YKES , Circuit Judge. Andrew Johnston is a recidivist bank
robber and repetitive filer of frivolous motions, appeals, and
satellite litigation challenging his most recent criminal
conviction and sentence. The judgment was entered in early
2019 after a jury convicted him of attempted bank robbery
and the district court sentenced him to 168 months in prison.

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2 No. 21-2081
While awaiting transfer from Chicago’s Metropolitan
Correctional Center to federal prison to serve his sentence,
Johnston heard a rumor that a fellow inmate—a high-
ranking member of the Sinaloa Cartel—had ordered a hit on
another inmate. Johnston reported this information to au-
thorities and assisted them by recording a conversation with
the cartel leader. He also testified at the cartel leader’s
sentencing hearing, but the district judge in that case de-
clined to credit his testimony. The judge did, however,
consider the recorded conversation when imposing sentence
on the cartel leader.
In return for this assistance, the government moved for a
25% reduction in Johnston’s sentence under Rule 35(b) of the
Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. The rule permits the
district court to reduce an offender’s sentence based on his
“substantial assistance in investigating or prosecuting
another person”—but only on “the government’s motion
made within one year of sentencing.” F ED. R. C RIM .
P. 35(b)(1). The government’s motion was quite late: it was
filed in April 2021, more than two years after Johnston was
sentenced. The time limit has some exceptions, see id.
R. 35(b)(2), but none applied.
The government took the position that the deadline is
waivable and expressly waived it, so the judge in Johnston’s
case addressed the motion on the merits. She agreed that his
help was useful (if only partially so) and that postsentencing
cooperation sometimes supports an inference of genuine
acceptance of responsibility. But the inference was weakened
in Johnston’s case by his repeated frivolous challenges to his
conviction and sentence. Because of this vexatious litigation
conduct, the judge determined that he had not

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No. 21-2081 3
acknowledged responsibility. She reduced his sentence to
151 months—a 10% reduction rather than the 25% requested
by the government.
Johnston appealed, challenging the 10% reduction as too
small. His primary argument is that the judge improperly
considered his postconviction litigation conduct.
Our first question, however, concerns the district court’s
jurisdiction to consider the untimely Rule 35(b) motion. In
United States v. McDowell, 117 F.3d 974 (7th Cir. 1997), we
held that the one-year time limit in Rule 35(b)(1) is jurisdic-
tional. That was before the Supreme Court’s more recent line
of cases clarifying the distinction between jurisdictional and
nonjurisdictional procedural requirements. More to the
point here, the Court has held that time limits in court-made
rules are not jurisdictional. Hamer v. Neighborhood Hous. Servs.
of Chi., 583 U.S. 17, 19 (2017). Hamer has displaced our deci-
sion in McDowell, which means that the one-year time limit
in Rule 35(b)(1) is a nonjurisdictional claim-processing rule,
enforceable if properly raised but waived if not. The judge
was right to consider the merits of the motion.
Still, our review of her decision is narrow: we may
review only whether the sentence “was imposed in violation
of law.” 18 U.S.C. § 3742(a). No legal rule barred the judge
from considering Johnston’s frivolous litigation conduct.
Whether that conduct deserved the weight she attributed to
it is an unreviewable discretionary determination. We affirm.
I. Background
Johnston has a long history of bank robberies. Before the
conviction at issue here, he had served short terms in federal
prison for earlier bank-robbery sprees in 2008 and 2013. He

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4 No. 21-2081
returned to this pattern soon after completing his sentence
on the 2013 judgment. In July 2017, just a few months after
his release from prison, he entered a bank in suburban
Chicago, threatened a teller, and attempted a robbery. He
was unsuccessful and was quickly caught and indicted for
attempted bank robbery.
Protracted pretrial proceedings followed. Early in the
case, Johnston rejected the assistance of appointed counsel
and asked the judge for permission to represent himself. The
judge granted his request, permitted counsel to withdraw,
and appointed standby counsel. Johnston then peppered the
court with numerous frivolous motions, frequently followed
by frivolous interlocutory appeals when the motions were
denied. In January 2019 the case proceeded to a two-day
trial. The jury found Johnston guilty after just 90 minutes of
deliberation. On April 4 the judge sentenced him to
168 months in prison.
While awaiting transfer to his designated prison,
Johnston was detained at Chicago’s Metropolitan
Correctional Center (“MCC”). There he acquired a
reputation as a jailhouse lawyer and assisted fellow inmate
Jesus Raul Beltran Leon with some legal matters. Beltran was
a high-ranking member of the Sinaloa Cartel, serving as a
lieutenant to Ivan and Jesus Alfredo Guzman, sons of the
former cartel kingpin Joaquin Guzman Loera (“El Chapo”).
Beltran was detained at MCC pending trial on federal
charges for his involvement in facilitating the cartel’s drug-
distribution and money-laundering activities.
In late April Johnston heard from another MCC inmate
that Beltran had put out a bounty on Damaso Lopez Serrano,
another high-ranking member of the Sinaloa Cartel. Lopez

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No. 21-2081 5
was also in federal custody on drug-trafficking charges and
was cooperating with the government; he had been trans-
ferred to MCC for possible testimony at Beltran’s trial.
Johnston called his girlfriend and asked her to pass the
rumor about the hit to MCC staff. Soon after, Johnston began
cooperating with federal law-enforcement officials to inves-
tigate the matter. He agreed to wear a wire and record a
conversation with Beltran. The recording was cut short for
reasons outside his control, but it did capture Beltran seem-
ingly acknowledging that he had offered to pay $25,000 to
anyone who would assault Lopez.
The government later presented Johnston as a witness at
Beltran’s sentencing hearing to support its request for a
Sentencing Guidelines enhancement for obstruction of
justice. The recorded conversation was also admitted. The
judge presiding in Beltran’s case declined to credit Johnston’s
testimony and denied the government’s request for the
obstruction enhancement. He did, however, rely on the
information captured on the recording when evaluating
Beltran’s mitigation arguments and the sentencing factors in
18 U.S.C. § 3553(a).
Johnston was not immediately rewarded for his help in
Beltran’s case. In the interim, we affirmed his conviction and
sentence in May 2020. In July he wrote to the government
seeking a 66% sentence reduction as a reward for his assis-
tance in the Beltran prosecution. After some time passed, the
government assured Johnston that it would follow up.
Meanwhile, Johnston continued to file numerous frivolous
motions, lawsuits, and appeals challenging his conviction
and sentence in various respects.

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In February 2021 the government notified Johnston that it
would seek a 25% sentence reduction under Rule 35(b) in
recognition of his assistance. Johnston was not satisfied and
sued the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern
District of Illinois under the Administrative Procedure Act
seeking an injunction requiring the government to move the
court to reduce his sentence by 50% or more. The suit was
soon dismissed; the judge explained that an APA suit is not
the right way to seek a reduction of a criminal sentence.
Johnston followed up with a motion in his criminal case
asking the court to compel the government to move for at
least a 50% sentence reduction. He also moved to reassign
his case to a new judge. He insisted that Judge Pallmeyer,
who had presided at trial and sentenced him, was conflicted
based on a separate lawsuit he had filed against her and her
court reporter. That suit was quickly dismissed, but
Johnston’s appeal was then pending before this court.
A few days later—on April 12, 2021—the government
filed a motion under Rule 35(b)(1) seeking a 25% reduction
in Johnston’s sentence based on his assistance in the Beltran
case. As we’ve noted, the motion was not filed within one
year of sentencing as the rule requires. Indeed, the deadline
had expired more than a year earlier. The government
maintained that it could waive the time limit and did so.
In a written order issued on May 28, the judge denied
Johnston’s motion to reassign the case and struck his motion
to compel as unnecessary because the government had filed
a Rule 35(b) motion. Turning to the substance of that motion,
the judge acknowledged that Johnston’s cooperation was
“unquestionably useful to the government” and that
“cooperation is to be encouraged.” She also noted that

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No. 21-2081 7
postconviction assistance to law enforcement “is often a sign
of acceptance of one’s own responsibility for wrongdoing.”
But the judge explained that she could not draw the
favorable inference in Johnston’s case because he had not, in
fact, acknowledged any of his own wrongdoing. Quite the
contrary. As the judge explained, Johnston had filed many
baseless actions and appeals challenging his conviction “in
one form or another”—suing the judge and her court
reporter, prosecutors, a telephone-service provider, and
various state and federal law-enforcement officials. 1 And he
continued his pattern of flooding the trial and appellate
courts with frivolous motions and petitions.
Accordingly, based on the § 3553(a) sentencing factors,
the judge concluded that a 25% sentence reduction was
unwarranted and instead reduced Johnston’s sentence by
1 Johnston’s many court filings included a RICO claim against Judge
Pallmeyer, Johnston v. Pallmeyer, No. 18-cv-05651 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 16, 2018);
a Bivens claim against the judge and her court reporter, Johnston v. Ward,
No. 20-cv-07247 (N.D. Ill. Nov. 20, 2020); a conversion claim against
AT&T, Johnston v. AT&T Corp., No. 18-cv-06060 (N.D. Ill. Sept. 4, 2018); a
replevin action against the United States, Johnston v. United States, No. 20-
cv-03729 (N.D. Ill. June 19, 2020); a § 1983 claim against a police officer
involved in his arrest, Johnston v. DeVries, No. 17-cv-06183, 2021 WL
3930298 (N.D. Ill. Sept. 2, 2021); and a RICO claim against the FBI agents
who investigated the robbery, Johnston v. Hoogland, No. 20-cv-07814 (N.D.
Ill. Dec. 30, 2020). He also filed multiple frivolous appeals in connection
with these actions. Indeed, in our order denying his petition for a writ of
mandamus in one of these cases, we warned him “for a third time” that
additional frivolous filings may result in the imposition of sanctions and
a filing bar. Order, United States v. Johnston, No. 19-3376 (7th Cir. Dec. 13,
2019), ECF No. 4. He did not heed that warning. In dismissing a later
frivolous appeal, we imposed sanctions against him. Johnston v. Ward,
No. 21-1221, 2021 WL 4894487, at *1 (7th. Cir. Oct. 20, 2021).

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8 No. 21-2081
10% to 151 months. Her decision was based largely on
Johnston’s failure to accept any responsibility for his own
wrongdoing and his “continued lack of remorse,” as reflect-
ed in his repetitive frivolous postconviction litigation.
Johnston appealed, arguing in his pro se brief that his as-
sistance to the government merited at least a 50% reduction
and challenging the judge’s refusal to reassign the case to
another judge. After our initial review of the case, we struck
the briefs and appointed counsel for Johnston on appeal. 2
We also asked the parties to address the district court’s
jurisdiction to hear the government’s untimely Rule 35(b)
motion. More specifically, we directed the parties to address
the effect of the Supreme Court’s decision in Hamer on our
1997 decision in McDowell, which held that the one-year time
limit in the rule is jurisdictional. Anticipating that the parties
would agree that the time limit in Rule 35(b)(1) is nonjuris-
dictional and therefore waivable, we appointed an amicus
curiae to brief any good-faith arguments that McDowell
remains good law after Hamer. 3
II. Discussion
With the assistance of counsel on appeal, Johnston has
dropped his claim that the judge had a conflict of interest,
and he no longer presses his argument for a 50% sentence
reduction. He challenges only the judge’s refusal to award a
2 Attorney Joseph P. Falvey of Jones Day accepted the appointment and
has ably discharged his duties. We thank him for his assistance to his
client and the court.
3 Attorney Brent T. Murphy of Latham & Watkins LLP accepted the
appointment and has ably discharged this responsibility. We thank him
for his assistance to the court.

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No. 21-2081 9
25% sentence reduction as requested by the government.
Before turning to this argument, we first address the district
court’s jurisdiction to entertain the government’s untimely
Rule 35(b) motion.
Once imposed, a federal prison sentence is final and may
be modified only in limited circumstances. The sentencing
statute provides that a final sentence of imprisonment may
be modified only as “expressly permitted by statute or by
Rule 35 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.”
18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(B). Rule 35 permits the court to reduce
a sentence based on the defendant’s substantial assistance to
the government, but only on the government’s motion and
within certain time and substantive limits. More specifically,
the rule provides that “[u]pon the government’s motion made
within one year of sentencing, the court may reduce a sentence
if the defendant, after sentencing, provided substantial
assistance in investigating or prosecuting another person.”
F ED. R. C RIM . P. 35(b)(1) (emphasis added).
The rule permits certain motions filed after the one-year
time limit, but only in limited circumstances: “Upon the
government’s motion made more than one year after sentencing,
the court may reduce a sentence if the defendant’s substan-
tial assistance involved … information not known to the
defendant until one year or more after sentencing”; infor-
mation that “did not become useful to the government until
more than one year after sentencing”; or “information the
usefulness of which could not reasonably have been antici-
pated by the defendant until more than one year after sen-
tencing.” Id. R. 35(b)(2) (emphasis added).
In Johnston’s case the government missed the deadline by
more than a year, and no exception applies. Almost 30 years

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10 No. 21-2081
ago, we held that the time limit is a jurisdictional bar and
thus cannot be waived. McDowell, 117 F.3d at 978–80. If
McDowell controls, we must vacate the order modifying
Johnston’s sentence.
As noted, we asked the parties and amicus to address
whether our decision in McDowell has survived the Supreme
Court’s more recent caselaw clarifying the line between
jurisdictional and nonjurisdictional procedural require-
ments—including time limits like the one in Rule 35(b)(1).
They have done so. We now hold that McDowell has been
displaced by the Court’s decision in Hamer.
To begin, for almost two decades now, the Court has
sought to curtail the too-frequent tendency to classify proce-
dural requirements as jurisdictional. To that end, the Court
has highlighted “the distinction between jurisdictional
prescriptions and nonjurisdictional claim-processing rules.”
Fort Bend County v. Davis, 587 U.S. 541, 548 (2019). The
jurisdictional label, the Court has explained, is “generally
reserved for prescriptions delineating the classes of cases a
court may entertain (subject-matter jurisdiction) and the
persons over whom the court may exercise adjudicatory
authority (personal jurisdiction).” Id. Claim-processing rules,
on the other hand, are more common and include an array of
procedural requirements and preconditions to relief that
“seek to promote the orderly progress of litigation by requir-
ing that the parties take certain procedural steps at certain
specified times.” Id. at 548–49 (quotation marks omitted).
“A claim-processing rule may be mandatory in the sense
that a court must enforce the rule if a party properly raise[s]
it,” id. at 549 (alteration in original) (quotation marks omit-
ted), but it can be waived or forfeited, Hamer, 583 U.S. at 20.

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No. 21-2081 11
A jurisdictional rule, in contrast, “cannot be waived or
forfeited, must be raised by courts sua sponte, and … do[es]
not allow for equitable exceptions.” Boechler, P.C. v. Comm’r,
596 U.S. 199, 203 (2022). Because such “[h]arsh consequences
attend the jurisdictional brand,” Fort Bend County, 587 U.S. at
548 (quotation marks omitted), the Court has lately con-
cerned itself with demarcating the line between true jurisdic-
tional limits and waivable claim-processing rules. See, e.g.,
Riley v. Bondi, 145 S. Ct. 2190 (2025) (30-day deadline to file a
petition for review of a BIA order, 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(1));
Harrow v. Dep’t of Defense, 601 U.S. 480 (2024) (60-day dead-
line to appeal to the Federal Circuit, 5 U.S.C. § 7703(b)(1));
Boechler, 596 U.S. 199 (30-day deadline to file a petition for
review in the Tax Court, 26 U.S.C. § 6330(d)(1)).
For our purposes, the most relevant decision in this line
of cases is Hamer. There the Court emphasized that Congress
is the relevant actor when it comes to the jurisdiction of the
federal courts, bluntly reminding us that “[o]nly Congress
may determine a lower federal court’s subject-matter juris-
diction.” Hamer, 583 U.S. at 19 (quotation marks omitted). A
corollary of this fundamental principle is that “[a] time limit
not prescribed by Congress ranks as a mandatory claim-
processing rule.” Id. Accordingly, “a time limit prescribed
only in a court-made rule … is not jurisdictional; it is, in-
stead, a mandatory claim-processing rule.” Id. As the Court
explained in Hamer, this limitation—rooted in the allocation
of authority in our constitutional system—has sometimes
been overlooked. Id.
Indeed, we overlooked this principle in McDowell. Our
holding there—that the one-year time limit in Rule 35(b) is
jurisdictional—cannot be reconciled with Hamer. McDowell

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12 No. 21-2081
relied on earlier opinions from our court and other circuits
adopting jurisdictional interpretations of previous versions
of Rule 35. 117 F.3d at 978. We noted as well that the district
courts had lacked the power to revisit a sentence before the
Federal Rules were adopted, and we also pointed to Rule 45
of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which includes
Rule 35 among the time limits that may not be extended. Id.
at 979. We closed with a practical consideration, noting that
the government’s ability to waive the time limit “would
render the deadline ineffectual” because neither the
government nor the defendant would challenge a tardy
motion; we found it “difficult to conceive of a regime under
which it would be the responsibility of the parties to monitor
the government’s compliance with Rule 35(b).” Id. at 979–80.
Absent from this analysis is an acknowledgement of
Congress’s exclusive role in delineating the subject-matter
jurisdiction of the lower federal courts. The Court’s recent
cases have reminded us of the primacy of this principle.
Hamer is particularly relevant, holding in unequivocal terms
that time limits in court-made rules are not jurisdictional,
displacing our decision in McDowell.
The amicus identifies a path to continuing to classify the
rule’s one-year time limit as jurisdictional, as we did in
McDowell. The argument centers on § 3582(c)(1)(B), which
cross-references Rule 35. As relevant here, that subsection
provides that “[t]he court may not modify a term of impris-
onment once it has been imposed except that … the court
may modify an imposed term of imprisonment to the extent
otherwise expressly permitted by statute or by Rule 35 of the
Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.” § 3582(c)(1)(B).

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No. 21-2081 13
The general cross-reference to Rule 35 in § 3582(c)(1)(B) is
not alone enough to confer jurisdictional significance on the
rule’s time limit or any of its other conditions for relief.
Moreover, we’ve rejected a jurisdictional reading of § 3582(c)
in a case involving an adjacent subsection of the statute. In
United States v. Taylor, 778 F.3d 667 (7th Cir. 2015), we consid-
ered whether the sentence-modification criteria in
§ 3582(c)(2) are jurisdictional in nature. That part of the
statute permits the court to modify a sentence “in the case of
a defendant who has been sentenced to a term of imprison-
ment based on a sentencing range that has subsequently
been lowered by the Sentencing Commission.” § 3582(c)(2).
Taylor noted, as we have here, that the Supreme Court
has “taken new care” to observe the line between true
jurisdictional prescriptions and nonjurisdictional case-
processing rules, emphasizing that limits on the court’s
power are “ultimately up to Congress.” 778 F.3d at 670.
Accordingly, we looked for cues in the statute’s language
and structure, noting that Ҥ 3582 is not part of a jurisdic-
tional portion of the criminal code[,] … [n]or is subsection (c)
phrased in jurisdictional terms.” Id. at 671. Lacking any
signal from Congress that the eligibility criteria in subsec-
tion (c)(2) mark the boundaries of the court’s jurisdiction, we
concluded that “the limits on § 3582(c)(2) relief are not
jurisdictional.” Id. We accordingly clarified that the “district
courts have subject-matter jurisdiction over—that is, the
power to adjudicate—a § 3582(c)(2) motion even when
authority to grant a motion is absent because the statutory
criteria [have] not [been] met.” Id. at 670.
Our analysis in Taylor applies with equal force here. And
it forecloses any argument that the simple cross-reference to

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14 No. 21-2081
Rule 35 in § 3582(c)(1)(B) is enough, by itself, to confer
jurisdictional status on the one-year time limit in the rule.
Accordingly, we conclude that McDowell is no longer
good law: the Court’s decisions in Hamer and other recent
cases have effectively overruled it. We hold that Rule 35(b)’s
one-year time limit is a nonjurisdictional claim-processing
rule and may be waived.
Turning to Johnston’s arguments on the merits, we note
first that § 3742 narrowly circumscribes our review of the
judge’s Rule 35(b) ruling. United States v. Chapman, 532 F.3d
625, 628 (7th Cir. 2008). As relevant here, the statute limits us
to assessing whether “the sentence … was imposed in
violation of law.” § 3742(a)(1). 4 Arguments about the judge’s
discretionary determinations are outside the statutory scope
of review. United States v. McGee, 508 F.3d 442, 444 (7th Cir.
2007) (per curiam) (explaining that § 3742(a) “does not
authorize an appeal from a Rule 35(b) decision if the only
contention is that the district court did not exercise its discre-
tion more favorably to the defendant”).
Johnston’s counseled brief focuses on the judge’s
consideration of his postconviction litigation conduct. Much
of this argument—namely, that the judge wrongly concluded
that a 25% sentence reduction was unwarranted based on
Johnston’s frivolous, repetitive, and vexatious postconviction
litigation—challenges the judge’s discretionary judgments,
which are unreviewable under § 3742(a). Johnston does,
however, frame one reviewable claim of legal error: he
argues that it was unlawful for the judge to consider his
4 Section § 3742(a) includes three other grounds of review; none is
relevant here.

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No. 21-2081 15
litigation conduct at all in ruling on the government’s
Rule 35(b) motion.
But he has not identified any legal rule that bars a judge
from considering this type of conduct as reflecting poorly on
a defendant’s acceptance of responsibility. Indeed, we have
held to the contrary. “Post-arrest cooperation cannot be
assessed in a vacuum,” and we’ve distinguished between
cooperation that “represents an opportunistic attempt to
obtain a sentence reduction” and cooperation that represents
“a genuine alteration in the defendant’s life perspective.”
Chapman, 532 F.3d at 629.
Moreover, a judge may consider the § 3553(a) sentencing
factors when presented with a Rule 35(b) motion, id., and a
defendant’s lack of remorse can bear on that analysis, see,
e.g., United States v. Wood, 31 F.4th 593, 601 (7th Cir. 2022)
(including the defendant’s “lack of genuine remorse” in the
§ 3553(a) analysis); United States v. Norwood, 982 F.3d 1032,
1058 (7th Cir. 2020) (approving of the judge’s consideration
of the defendant’s lack of remorse and its connection with
the need for deterrence); Bergmann v. McCaughtry, 65 F.3d
1372, 1379 (7th Cir. 1995) (“It is well established that a sen-
tencing court may consider lack of remorse when imposing a
sentence.”).
And although we’ve cautioned that “[f]rustration in the
face of repeated post-conviction filings” should not be used
as a basis to reject a sentence-modification motion under
§ 3582(c), United States v. Purnell, 701 F.3d 1186, 1191 (7th Cir.
2012), we’ve also said that a judge may permissibly consider
a defendant’s postconviction conduct—including his court
filings—as evidence of lack of remorse and failure to accept
responsibility, id. at 1191–92.

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16 No. 21-2081
Nothing here suggests that frustration with Johnston’s
frivolous court filings “permeate[d]” the judge’s decision or
that she punished him for his vexatious litigation conduct.
United States v. Lewis, 817 F.3d 1054, 1055 (7th Cir. 2016).
Rather, the judge identified genuine “acceptance of one’s
own responsibility” as an important sentence-modification
factor. She concluded that Johnston’s assistance to the
government, though certainly helpful, was largely (though
not wholly) outweighed by his failure to accept
responsibility, as reflected in his repetitive frivolous
postconviction litigation. Perhaps this conduct didn’t
deserve the weight she gave it, but that’s a discretionary
judgment beyond our scope of review.
Johnston’s final arguments are more easily resolved. He
claims that the judge failed to consider some of the § 3553(a)
factors. But judges do not need to consider all the § 3553(a)
factors when ruling on a Rule 35(b) motion; a sentence-
modification proceeding is not a full resentencing. United
States v. Webster, 666 F.3d 1023, 1025 (7th Cir. 2012)
(“Rule 35(b) hearings do not provide an opportunity for a
full resentencing.”); see also Purnell, 701 F.3d at 1190 (“We do
not require the district court to analyze each section 3553(a)
factor … .”); Chapman, 532 F.3d at 630–31 (rejecting the
argument that the judge should have considered “the need
to avoid unwarranted sentencing disparities,” a § 3553(a)
factor, because the judge “emphasize[d] other relevant
§ 3553(a) factors” and stated that he considered the relevant
factors).
Johnston also contends that the judge did not adequately
explain her decision. Not so. The judge acknowledged that
Johnston’s assistance was “unquestionably useful to the

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No. 21-2081 17
government” but explained that a 25% sentence reduction
was unwarranted based on his lack of remorse and because
her evaluation of the § 3553 factors had “resulted in a sub-
stantial sentence just two years ago.” Johnston relies on
United States v. Harrington, 834 F.3d 733 (7th Cir. 2016), as
support for his argument that the judge’s explanation was
inadequate. That case, like this one, involved a partial grant
of a Rule 35(b) motion, but the similarities go no further. We
remanded in Harrington after finding “a lack of clarity” in
the judge’s explanation of her ruling. Id. at 737.
There is no lack of clarity in the judge’s ruling in this
case. “The court is required only to articulate the basis for its
decision clearly enough for this court to determine whether
the decision is reasonable.” Purnell, 701 F.3d at 1190. The
judge did so here.
A FFIRMED

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