Description: Peoria, Illinois criminal defense lawyer represented the defendant charged with attempted robbery.

In January 2017, Deaunta Tyler, accompanied by Ledell Tyler and Dalvent Jackson, forcibly entered a home in Rock Island, Illinois, armed with a rifle and a handgun and in search of cocaine. Instead of drugs, they found a family spending a quiet evening together. With weapons brandished, the intruders demanded to know where the cocaine was. None existed, so the victims could not provide an answer. Nevertheless, Tyler and his accomplices moved the family throughout the house at gunpoint looking for drugs. As they searched in vain, the intruders passed the two firearms among themselves and threatened to kill the victims. At one point, Jackson fired the handgun in the foyer of the home. The three men remained for about an hour, eventually leaving with a few hundred dollars in cash and a small amount of marijuana.

Deaunta Tyler was convicted by a jury of attempted Hobbs Act robbery, possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, and unlawful possession of a firearm as a convicted felon.

By confirming that the court had addressed sufficiently his arguments in mitigation, Tyler waived a challenge based on a
supposed failure to do so. A little history may be useful. In United States v. Cunningham, 429 F.3d 673, 679 (7th Cir. 2005), we wrote that, when imposing a sentence, a district court must generally address a defendant’s principal arguments in mitigation. Courts are afforded broad discretion during sentencing, but the record must show that the court actually exercised that discretion. See, e.g., United States v. Miranda, 505 F.3d 785, 792–94 (7th Cir. 2007) (remanding for resentencing where district court failed to address defendant’s principal, non-frivolous argument for a lower sentence based on well-documented and severe mental health problems); Cunningham, 429 F.3d at 679–80 (ordering resentencing because sentencing court “passed over in silence the principal argument made by the defendant even though the argument was not so weak as not to merit discussion”); see generally Carr v. O'Leary, 167 F.3d 1124, 1127 (7th Cir. 1999) (“a discretionary ruling … cannot be upheld when there is no indication that the judge exercised discretion”), citing Foman v. Davis, 371 U.S. 178, 182 (1962).

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Outcome: Affirmed

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