United States of America v. Ricky Brooks

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Argued February 28, 2023
Decided March 2, 2023
Before
FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge
DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge
AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge
No. 22-1889
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
RICKY BROOKS,
Defendant-Appellant.
Appeal from the United
States District Court for the
Northern District of Illinois,
Eastern Division.
No. 17 CR 173-5
John Robert Blakey,
Judge.
O R D E R
Ricky Brooks pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute controlled substances
and was sentenced to 140 months’ imprisonment. Although this sentence is less than
the lower end of the 188-to-235-month range that Brooks concedes was properly calcu-
lated under the Sentencing Guidelines, he contends that it is nonetheless unreasonably
high.
Brooks principally relies on 18 U.S.C. §3553(a)(6), which says that a district judge
must take into account “the need to avoid unwarranted sentence disparities among de-
fendants with similar records who have been found guilty of similar conduct”. He com-
pares his situation with that of other defendants charged as part of the same conspiracy

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No. 22-1889 Page 2
(or charged with substantive crimes related to the conspiracy). He recognizes that the
district judge discussed this statutory consideration but disputes the reasons the judge
gave for thinking him in need of greater specific deterrence than some of his confeder-
ates.
For example, the judge observed that Brooks is the only defendant in this group
who has been convicted of murder, while Brooks observes that the crime was commit-
ted when he was 15 and insists that it should have been discounted. The judge stressed
that Brooks is the only one of the defendants in Criminal History Category VI; he re-
sponds that some of his criminal history points rest on convictions for distributing mari-
juana, which is no longer criminal under Illinois law (but remains criminal under fed-
eral law). The judge observed that Brooks amassed a lengthy criminal history even
though he has spent all but seven years of his adult life in prison; Brooks replies that
this shows that many of his convictions are old. And so on.
These were fair arguments for a sentencing judge, but they have little traction on
appeal. Judges are entitled to give different sentences to different offenders who com-
mitted different crimes and have different criminal histories. See, e.g., United States v.
Turner, 604 F.3d 381, 389 (7th Cir. 2010). We do not see any clear factual error or abuse
of discretion by the judge, who evinced awareness of Brooks’s contentions. Indeed, it is
hard to square his position with the observation in Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 54
(2007), that a judge who “calculated and carefully reviewed the Guidelines range …
necessarily gave significant weight and consideration to the need to avoid unwarranted
disparities.” Brooks observes that the district judge departed from the recommended
range and said that he would have imposed the same sentence even had the Guidelines
recommended a different range, but this does not evade the point of Gall (and the many
decisions in this circuit based on its observation). If a sentence of 188 or 210 or 235
months would not have been unreasonably high under §3553(a)(6), it is impossible to
see how a sentence of 140 months could be unreasonably high under §3553(a)(6).
AFFIRMED

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