United States of America v. Richard A. Case, Jr.

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION
File Name: 11a0665n.06
No. 11-3080
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
RICHARD A. CASE, JR.,
Defendant-Appellant.
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ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED
STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR
THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF
OHIO
Before: MARTIN, GIBBONS, and KETHLEDGE, Circuit Judges.
KETHLEDGE, Circuit Judge. Richard Case pled guilty to one count of receiving child
pornography. At his sentencing hearing, his sister-in-law and mother-in-law gave victim-impact
statements. They asked the district court to sentence Case to a maximum term because of his
negative character and the negative impact of his crime on the family. The court thereafter sentenced
Case to a within-Guidelines term of 100-months’ imprisonment. Case now argues that the court
impermissibly considered these statements because neither his sister-in-law nor his mother-in-law
were “victims” of his crime, thus rendering his sentence unreasonable. Even assuming that neither
of his in-laws were direct victims of his crime, that fact is irrelevant. Congress expressly provided
that a court may consider any “information concerning the background, character, and conduct of
a person convicted of an offense . . . for the purpose of imposing an appropriate sentence.” 18

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No. 11-3080
United States v. Case
U.S.C. § 3661. Courts thus have “largely unlimited” discretion to consider whatever information
they find relevant to imposing sentence. E.g., Pepper v. United States, 131 S. Ct. 1229, 1240 (2011)
(internal quotation marks omitted). So the district court could freely consider these statements in
imposing Case’s sentence, regardless of whether the in-laws were properly characterized as
“victims.” And in any event, the district court explained that it limited its consideration of these
statements “to how these persons were victimized as opposed to details and facts that are not in
evidence and hearsay, and so forth”—even though the court permissibly could have considered those
details and facts. [R.42, at 29–30.]
To the extent that Case also challenges his sentence as substantively unreasonable, that
challenge also fails. The fact that the court rejected the Government’s recommendation of a lesser
sentence cannot by itself rebut the presumption of substantive reasonableness accorded to within-
Guidelines sentences, especially where, as here, the sentencing transcript reflects the court’s careful,
nonarbitrary consideration of the § 3553(a) factors and the defendant’s arguments. See United States
v. Brown, 579 F.3d 672, 677 (6th Cir. 2009).
The district court’s judgment is affirmed.
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