Seventh Circuit panel reverses below-guideline 16-year prison sentence as substantively unreasonable in terrorism case

Regular readers know I do not blog much about federal sentence reasonableness review these days because there is usually not that much worth blogging about.  Out of many thousands of appeals brought by federal defendants each year, typically only a few hundred are successful, and these are usually involve miscalculation of the guideline range.  The government rarely appeals, though it does often have a better success rate in the few dozen appeals it brings each year. 

In one particular (and rare) categories of cases, namely terrorism cases, the government has a particularly notable history of appellate success when arguing a sentence in unreasonably lenient (see posts linked below for some historical examples).  A helpful reader made sure I did not miss a new Seventh Circuit panel ruling handed down yesterday in this category: US v. Daoud, No. 19-2174 (7th Cir. Nov. 17, 2020) (available here).  Federal sentencing fans will want to review this 26-page opinion in detail, but the start and few passages from the body of the opinion provides the basics:

Adel Daoud pressed the button to detonate a bomb that would have killed hundreds of innocent people in the name of Islam.  Fortunately, the bomb was fake, and the FBI arrested him on the spot.  Two months later, while in pretrial custody, Daoud solicited the murder of the FBI agent who supplied the fake bomb.  Two and a half years later, while awaiting trial on the first two charges, Daoud tried to stab another inmate to death using makeshift weapons after the inmate drew a picture of the Prophet Muhammad.  Daoud eventually entered an Alford plea, and the cases were consolidated for sentencing.  The district court sentenced Daoud to a combined total of 16 years’ imprisonment for the crimes.  The government appeals that sentence on the ground that it was substantively unreasonable.  We agree.  We vacate the sentence and remand for resentencing....

[W]hile the district court paid lip service to the seriousness of the offenses, it undercut its own statements by unreasonably downplaying Daoud’s role in each offense.  District courts have broad discretion as to how to weigh the § 3553(a) factors, but a district court’s sentence must reflect a reasonable view of the facts and a reasonable weighing of the § 3553(a) factors....  Here, the district court sterilized Daoud’s offense conduct in ways that cannot be reconciled with the objective facts of these violent offenses.  That unreasonable view of the facts prevented the district court from properly weighing the seriousness of the offenses when selecting its sentence....

In the district court’s telling, Daoud’s age, mental health, and general awkwardness and impressionability converged to render him uniquely susceptible to criminal influence. A sentencing court is well within its rights to consider a defendant’s mental limitations in mitigation.... But that factor only goes so far in this case.  Daoud committed the attempted bombing around his 19th birthday.  He was 19 when he solicited the FBI agent’s murder and 21 when he tried to stab a fellow inmate to death.  In other words, he was college aged at all relevant times.  He may have been immature, but, as the court recognized, he was old enough to know what he was doing.

Prior posts on similar reasonableness ruling:

• Split Second Circuit panel finds 17-year (way-below-guideline) prison sentence in terrorism case substantively unreasonable (from Dec 2019)
• En banc Ninth Circuit finds Millennium Bomber sentence substantively unreasonable (from March 2012)
• Split Eleventh Circuit deems Jose Padilla's 17-year terrorism sentence substantively unreasonable (from Sept 2011)
• Second Circuit issues huge opinion (with sentencing stuff) in Lynne Stewart case (from Sept 2009)
• A terror-filled debate over substantive reasonableness (4th Circuit from June 2008)