United States of America v. Timothy L. Richards

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 25-1357
U NITED STATES OF A MERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
TIMOTHY L. R ICHARDS,
Defendant-Appellant.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Indiana, Fort Wayne Division.
No. 1:10CR6-001 – Holly A. Brady, Chief Judge.
____________________
A RGUED NOVEMBER 18, 2025 — DECIDED D ECEMBER 8, 2025
____________________
Before HAMILTON , S T. EVE, and K IRSCH , Circuit Judges.
ST. EVE, Circuit Judge. After Timothy Richards violated nu-
merous conditions of his supervised release, the district court
sentenced him to 36 months’ imprisonment. Richards appeals
his sentence, arguing the district court erred by increasing the
length of his sentence for the purpose of rehabilitation. Tapia
v. United States, 564 U.S. 319 (2011). We affirm.

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2 No. 25-1357
I. Background
In 2012, the district court sentenced Richards to 180
months’ imprisonment and six years of supervised release fol-
lowing his convictions for drug and firearm offenses. Rich-
ards completed his term of imprisonment and began super-
vised release in 2022. His conditions of supervised release in-
cluded keeping lawful employment, notifying his probation
officer of changes of address or employment, and not pos-
sessing controlled substances. Richards did not comply with
these conditions. In May 2024, the homeless shelter where
Richards resided suspended him, but Richards failed to notify
his probation officer of this change in residence. Further, he
affirmatively misrepresented his place of residence in July
2024. That same month, Richards left his job without finding
another. Yet he did not notify his probation officer of his
change in employment status. Richards also failed multiple
drug tests. Richards’s probation officer petitioned to revoke
his supervised release in November 2024.
Richards admitted these violations at a February 2025 rev-
ocation hearing. The district court determined that the appli-
cable Guidelines range for these violations combined with
Richards’s criminal history was 18 to 24 months’ imprison-
ment. The government requested that the court sentence Rich-
ards to 30 months’ imprisonment with supervised release
upon completion. Richards requested 18 months’ imprison-
ment without additional supervised release, contending that
the violations were not particularly serious. While consider-
ing Richards’s request, the district court said it was “strug-
gling” with the fact that Richards had not satisfied his original
sentence and “he really has four years of supervised release
that he hasn’t satisfied.” Both the government and Richards’s

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No. 25-1357 3
counsel emphasized the futility of additional supervision;
Richards would continue to violate the conditions because he
wanted to live his life independently—even if it meant being
homeless and jobless. Richards explained he would rather re-
turn to prison than continue under his probation officer’s su-
pervision.
The district court revoked Richards’s supervised release
and imposed a 36-month sentence. The district court ex-
plained it came to this decision by considering the “serious-
ness of the admitted violations, the defendant’s personal his-
tory and characteristics, the defendant’s criminal history and
the term of imprisonment and term of supervised release ini-
tially imposed by the Court in this case.” It also recognized
“the defendant’s stated intention to not comply with the fur-
ther term of supervised release if the Court were to impose
one.” The district court said, “a sentence of 36 months of im-
prisonment shall be imposed to hold the defendant accounta-
ble for the violations.”
The district court continued:
The sentence is imposed for the following rea-
sons: While it is outside the guideline range, the
Court nonetheless finds that it provides the de-
fendant with needed correctional treatment in
the most effective matter, and also adequately
takes into account the history and characteris-
tics of the defendant. Therefore, it is ordered
that the defendant’s term of supervision is re-
voked and the defendant is hereby committed
to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons to be im-
prisoned for a term of 36 months of

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4 No. 25-1357
imprisonment to hold the defendant accounta-
ble for the violations.
After recommending that the Bureau of Prisons designate
a specific facility for Richards and give him the opportunity
to participate in the Residential Drug Abuse Program, the dis-
trict court added: “It is ordered that upon release from impris-
onment … the defendant shall be discharged from any further
term of supervised release.”
II. Discussion
On appeal, Richards argues that the district court commit-
ted a Tapia error because it primarily focused on rehabilitation
when sentencing him to 36 months’ imprisonment. Although
the parties disagree on the proper standard of review, the dis-
trict court did not err under either standard, so we need not
decide that question.*
* We recognize that we have not always applied a consistent standard
of review in Tapia cases. Compare United States v. Shaw, 39 F.4th 450, 456
(7th Cir. 2022) (applying de novo review), and United States v. Wilcher,
91 F.4th 864, 869–70 (7th Cir. 2024) (same), with United States v. Long,
79 F.4th 882, 885 (7th Cir. 2023) (applying plain error review), and United
States v. Kopp, 922 F.3d 337, 340, 342 n.2 (7th Cir. 2019) (same).
While we leave the opportunity to reconcile these cases for another
day, we address the government’s contention that the Supreme Court’s
dicta in Esteras v. United States, 606 U.S. 185, 202–03 (2025), abrogates our
opinions in United States v. Wood, 31 F.4th 593, 598 (7th Cir. 2022), and
United States v. Pennington, 908 F.3d 234, 238 (7th Cir. 2018). Because the
Supreme Court did not discuss Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 51(a)
in Esteras, we previously rejected this argument, see United States v. Stew-
art, 148 F.4th 501, 509 n.3 (7th Cir. 2025), and do so again here.

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No. 25-1357 5
A Tapia error occurs when a district court focuses “exclu-
sively or disproportionately on rehabilitation in deciding …
how long a [prison] term should be.” Long, 79 F.4th at 889;
see also 18 U.S.C. § 3582(a) (“[I]mprisonment is not an appro-
priate means of promoting correction and rehabilitation.”).
While a district court can urge the Bureau of Prisons to place
a defendant in a prison-treatment program, United States v.
Lucas, 670 F.3d 784, 795 (7th Cir. 2012), it cannot make such
placement the driving force behind the length of the sentence.
See Shaw, 39 F.4th at 459.
Richards asserts that the district court committed a Tapia
error by lengthening his sentence 12 months over the Guide-
lines range. Richards supports his argument with the district
court’s statement that it was imposing a sentence outside the
Guidelines range because “it provides the defendant with
needed correctional treatment.” But Richards mischaracter-
izes the Tapia inquiry. For a district court to lengthen a defend-
ant’s sentence improperly for the purpose of rehabilitation,
there must be an “indication that the district court chose the
length of the sentence based upon the greater opportunities
for rehabilitation a longer prison sentence allowed.” Lucas,
670 F.3d at 795. In other words, the sentence must have been
longer than the one the district court would have ordered had
rehabilitation not driven it. See Kopp, 922 F.3d at 342–43
(changing sentence from 18 to 20 months so the defendant
could participate in a drug abuse program). A district court
can stay within the Guidelines and still make this error, see id.
at 340, so a sentence over the Guidelines range alone does not
establish a Tapia error. And here, Richards provides no such
comparison to what the district court would have otherwise
ordered.

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6 No. 25-1357
Richards maintains that his supervised release violations
were not serious, so the district court could only have consid-
ered rehabilitation when setting his sentence at 36 months.
But as the government correctly notes, the district court con-
sidered a myriad of grounds for Richards’s sentence: Rich-
ards’s personal history and characteristics; his criminal his-
tory and original sentence; his stated refusal to comply with
the conditions of supervised release; and his numerous viola-
tions of the conditions of his supervised release. And even if
the violations were not serious, there were many.
Reviewing the entirety of the sentencing transcript,
see United States v. Durham, 967 F.3d 575, 579–80 (7th Cir.
2020), suggests another reason for the length of Richards’s
sentence: the district court, seeing it was fruitless for Richards
to remain on supervised release, chose the above-Guidelines
sentence because it was concerned about Richards not com-
pleting his original sentence. Richards had served only two of
the six years of supervised release in his original sentence. The
district court pointed out that he had not satisfied the original
sentence and “he really has four years of supervised release
that he hasn’t satisfied.” It was struggling with that fact. It
would make sense then for the district court to make this com-
promise: there was no supervised release after Richards’s
term of imprisonment—as Richards desired—but Richards
would serve three years’ imprisonment, meaning he would
nearly satisfy his original sentence.
While it is true the district court also reasoned the sentence
“provides the defendant with needed correctional treatment
in the most effective manner,” this phrase alone—a restate-
ment of the rehabilitation factor of 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)—does
not show, as Richards suggests, that the district court

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No. 25-1357 7
disproportionately focused on rehabilitation when setting the
length of Richards’s sentence. The district court was required
to consider rehabilitation before revoking Richards’s supervi-
sion and imposing a sentence. See 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a); Shaw,
39 F.4th at 459. It did so properly by stating this factor and
recommending that Richards participate in prison programs.
See Lucas, 670 F.3d at 795.
* * *
The judgment of the district court is
AFFIRMED.

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