United States v. Adams, No. 16-2928 (7th Cir. 2018)
Annotate this CaseAdams, age 20, was a member of the Vice Lords gang and had a lengthy criminal record. Officers stopped Adams on a probation warrant, then retraced his steps to where they first spotted him.They found a semiautomatic handgun with a 30-round magazine under a wheelchair ramp, where Adams had ditched it when he saw the police. Adams pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 87 months in prison—the top of the Guidelines range. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, rejecting an argument that the judge impermissibly considered unreliable evidence linking him to seven unsolved shootings when weighing the sentencing factors under 18 U.S.C. 3553(a). The judge “wisely approached this material with caution” and declined to make any explicit findings on the subject. The judge relied on the government’s presentation only very generally, and only to the extent that it confirmed what the presentence report had documented: Adams is a headstrong gang member who began committing crimes at age 14 and immersed himself in the culture of firearms possession and violence. “That careful and limited approach raises no due-process concerns and was certainly not an abuse of discretion.”
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.