United States of America v. Lamar E. Sanders

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted March 5, 2025*
Decided March 17, 2025
Before
MICHAEL B. BRENNAN, Circuit Judge
CANDACE JACKSON-AKIWUMI, Circuit Judge
JOSHUA P. KOLAR, Circuit Judge
No. 24-2763
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
LAMAR E. SANDERS,
Defendant-Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Northern District of
Indiana, Hammond Division.
No. 2:08cr22-001
Joseph S. Van Bokkelen,
Judge.
O R D E R
Lamar Sanders was convicted of kidnapping two victims (including a child),
18 U.S.C. § 1201, and extortion, id. § 1951. He received a below-guidelines term of 300
months in prison for the kidnapping, the statutory minimum for violent crimes against
children. See id. § 3559(f)(2). Sanders moved for compassionate release under 18 U.S.C.
* 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. FED . 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NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION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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§ 3582(c)(1)(A). He argued that his sentence should be reduced because recent caselaw
affected the statutory minimum sentence for kidnapping. The district court denied
relief. Because the district court did not abuse its discretion in doing so, we affirm.
Sanders was sentenced after a jury convicted him on federal kidnapping and
extortion charges for taking a woman and her ten-year-old child hostage at gunpoint
and forcing the woman to retrieve money from her employer. The parties disagreed
over which statutory minimum for kidnapping applied. The government argued for a
300-month minimum sentence under § 3559(f)(2), which applied to offenders who
commit a “crime of violence” in kidnapping a minor. Sanders contended that a 240-
month minimum applied under § 1201(g) because his kidnapping of a minor did not
involve violence, and violence is required for § 3559(f)(2)’s longer minimum to apply.
The district court agreed with the government. It ruled that § 3559(f)(2) treats the
act of kidnapping a child as intrinsically a violent crime. It then calculated, without
objection, a range of 360 months to life under the Guidelines and imposed a below-
guidelines (and, under § 3559(f)(2), the statutory minimum) sentence of 300 months in
prison for the kidnapping offense. It also sentenced Sanders to 240 months’
imprisonment for the extortion offense, to run concurrently with the kidnapping
sentence, followed by 5 years’ supervised release.
Sanders’s sentence has survived post-verdict challenges. First, we affirmed his
conviction and sentence on direct appeal. See United States v. Sanders, 708 F.3d 976, 992–
94 (7th Cir. 2013). Next, Sanders moved under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 to contest the criminal
judgment. Four years later, he proposed supplementing his motion with a claim that
§ 3559(f)(2)’s 300-month statutory minimum did not apply because, he said, United
States v. Jenkins, 849 F.3d 390 (7th Cir. 2017), and Sessions v. Dimaya, 584 U.S. 148 (2018),
clarified that federal kidnapping is not a “crime of violence.” The district court rejected
the supplemental claim as untimely, and we denied a certificate of appealability.
Last year, Sanders sought compassionate release under § 3582(c)(1)(A), invoking
U.S.S.G. § 1B1.13(b)(6). Under this Guideline, an “extraordinary and compelling reason”
to reduce his sentence may arise if he is serving “an unusually long sentence” and a
post-verdict change in law would yield “a gross disparity” between his sentence and
the sentence he would “likely” receive today. Sanders asserted that two such changes
had occurred. First, in Alleyne v. United States, 570 U.S. 99 (2013), the Supreme Court
held that any facts that increase a statutory minimum sentence must be found by a jury.
Id. at 103. Sanders contended that because the jury in his case did not expressly find that

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No. 24-2763 Page 3
the kidnapped child was a minor, neither statutory minimum sentence for child
kidnapping would apply today. Alternatively, he added, after Johnson v. United States,
571 U.S. 591 (2015), we ruled that federal kidnapping is not a “crime of violence” under
18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(3), because it does not require physical force. See Jenkins, 849 F.3d at
392–94; United States v. Jackson, 932 F.3d 556, 558 (7th Cir. 2019) (reaffirming Jenkins after
United States v. Davis, 588 U.S. 445, 447–48 (2019)). Sanders argued that the reasoning in
Jenkins applies to the crime-of-violence provision in § 3559(f)(2); thus his sentence
should be reduced to, at least, the 240-month minimum under § 1201.
The district court denied Sanders’s motion for two reasons. First, it ruled that,
even if the 300-month minimum of § 3559(f)(2) did not apply to him, Sanders still faced
a statutory minimum term of 240 months under § 1201. Although a post-Alleyne jury
would have to find beyond a reasonable doubt that the child was a minor for the
240-month minimum to apply, the court thought that a jury would undoubtedly do so
given the undisputed fact of the child’s age of 10. Further, it explained, the 5-year
difference between his current prison term of 300 months, and the statutory minimum
of 240 months, was not a “gross disparity” that warranted relief. It also suggested that
Sanders’s “likely sentence [today] could possibly be even higher” than 240 months
based on the relevant factors under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), thereby reducing or eliminating
“the disparity between the sentences.”
On appeal, Sanders principally argues that the 5-year difference in possible
sentences is a gross disparity. He reasons that a 240-month sentence would shed 20% off
his prison term and that 5 years in prison is significant. Relatedly, he contends that the
district court did not assess whether a sentence reduction was warranted under his
individual circumstances. We review the denial of a motion for compassionate release
for abuse of discretion. See United States v. Barbee, 25 F.4th 531, 532 (7th Cir. 2022).
The government argues that U.S.S.G. § 1B1.13(b)(6) is invalid because it exceeds
the Sentencing Commission’s statutory authority, an issue that we recently addressed in
United States v. Black, No. 24-1191 (7th Cir. Mar. 11, 2025). But we need not address the
effect of Black because, for reasons independent of Black, the district court did not abuse
its discretion in denying Sanders’s motion. The question whether the disparity between
the sentence Sanders is serving and the sentence he would likely receive today is
“gross” is primarily fact-intensive. It depends on the relevant characteristics of Sanders
and his crime. Judicial inquiries that are “primarily” based on facts are reviewed
deferentially. See Bufkin v. Collins, No. 23-713, slip op. at 12 (U.S. Mar. 5, 2025). Among
the many facts that the district court observed here were Sanders’s history of “serious

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No. 24-2763 Page 4
crimes” and his “many encounters with the criminal justice system since the age of 14,”
facts that the court suggested would prevent a shorter sentence today based on the
relevant § 3553(a) factors. Under the abuse-of-discretion standard applicable to this case
as applied to these facts, the district court permissibly denied early release based on the
absence of a “gross” disparity in sentences.
We conclude by observing that Sanders moved this court for appointment of
counsel. We denied it with the caveat that we may decide to recruit counsel if we found
that step appropriate after reviewing the briefs. For the reasons given above, we
maintain our initial denial of Sanders’s request.
AFFIRMED

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