144-month prison term upheld

United States v. Lawless, 2020 WL 6387499 (November 2, 2020) (CO): Lawless appealed the procedural and substantive reasonableness of his 144-month prison term. The panel affirmed the sentence. Lawless detonated or attempted to detonate 5 homemade bombs in 3 separate public places. He pleaded guilty to using a destructive device to commit a crime of violence under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Later, Lawless successfully argued that after Johnson v. United States, 576 U.S. 591 (2015) and United States v. Davis, 139 S.Ct. 2319 (2019), arson is not a crime of violence. Consequently, the § 924(c) conviction that presumed it was, was set aside and he was adjudged guilty of arson. At re-sentencing the advisory guideline term was 60 months but the court varied upward to 144 months. On appeal, Lawless argued that the district court procedurally erred when it gave substantial weight to his invalidated sentence; refused to credit his assistance to the government; sentenced him as if he intended to kill and injure others; and did not consider that no one was injured. The panel rejected each allegation, detailing from the record the district court’s explicit discussion of those points. The panel also held the sentence was not substantively unreasonable. It said it would not reweigh the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factors. The district court “thoroughly weighed” each factor, “reached a logical conclusion and detailed its reasoning.” The panel also said the court properly considered the potential harm that could have occurred had Lawless’s bombs detonated as he had intended. NOTE: Lawless preserved his procedural unreasonableness argument by objecting to the court’s sentence on the grounds he raised in his appeal.