Young Sentencing

1
1 IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE MIDDLE DISTRICT OF TENNESSEE
2 NASHVILLE DIVISION
3 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, )

)
4 Plaintiff, )
v. ) No. 3:11-CR-00012-27
5 )
CHRIS YOUNG, )
6 ) SENTENCING
Defendant. )
7 _______________________________)
9
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10
BEFORE THE HONORABLE KEVIN H. SHARP
11 TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS
AUGUST 28, 2014
12
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13
APPEARANCES:
14
For the Plaintiff: SUNNY A.M. KOSHY
15 Office of the United States Atty
110 Ninth Avenue, S
16 Suite A961
Nashville, Tennessee 37203
17
18 For the Defendant: HALLIE MCFADDEN

Attorney at Law
19 6422 Gray Fryar Road
P.O. Box 546
20 Signal Mountain, TN 37377
21
PREPARED BY: WYNETTE C. BLATHERS, RMR, CRR
22 Official Court Reporter
801 Broadway - Room A-837
23 Nashville, TN 37203
(615) 401-7221
24
25
Case 3:11-cr-00012 Document 2325 Filed 09/19/14 Page 1 of 49 PageID #: 11965

2
1 The above-styled cause came on to be heard on August
2 28, 2014, at 10:35 a.m., before the Honorable Kevin H. Sharp,
3 when the following proceedings were had, to-wit:
4 COURTROOM DEPUTY: All rise, please.
5 The United States District Court for the Middle
6 District of Tennessee is now in session, the Honorable Kevin
7 H. Sharp presiding.
8 THE COURT: Thanks. Y'all can be seated. All right.
9 Give me two seconds here, more than two seconds. Okay. We're
10 here in the sentencing in the case of United States v. Chris
11 Young. Everyone has had a chance to read the presentence
12 report?
13 MS. MCFADDEN: Yes, your Honor.
14 MR. KOSHY: Yes, your Honor.
15 THE COURT: Okay. I don't think there were any
16 objections. I know you've got your outstanding appeals on the
17 conviction itself, but you didn't have any objections to the
18 PSR?
19 MS. MCFADDEN: I did, your Honor. Again, mostly they
20 were factual, and I sent it by letter to Ms. Winfree on
21 June 30th.
22 THE COURT: The last thing I have says defense
23 counsel advises there's no objections to the presentence
24 report except defendant does not accept his guilt by jury
25 verdict on Counts 1, 11, and 12. That's the last thing I

3
1 have.
2 MS. MCFADDEN: I have my copy, your Honor. I'd be
3 happy --
4 THE COURT: Let me look at them. Have you seen
5 these, Mr. Koshy?
6 MR. KOSHY: I must have at some point.
7 THE COURT: Okay.
8 MR. KOSHY: I don't recall specifically.
9 THE COURT: Well, take a look at them first.
10 MS. MCFADDEN: It was sent by email to everybody, but
11 I would be more than happy to --
12 THE COURT: I just didn't get it. Were they --
13 MS. MCFADDEN: It was a document I know Ms. Winfree
14 had a hard time opening and emailed me, and I sent it in a
15 different format.
16 Your Honor, may I approach?
17 THE COURT: Yeah. Well, this isn't just factual,
18 though. You're objecting to the calculation of the offense
19 level on at least one of the counts; right?
20 MS. MCFADDEN: That's correct, your Honor.
21 THE COURT: Well, you object to 8 through 21, but
22 you're not objecting to 19; right? This is just going through
23 his criminal history.
24 MS. MCFADDEN: Your Honor, I'm sorry. What --
25 THE COURT: On paragraph 19 you objected to 8 through

4
1 21. I'm just going through these paragraphs. A lot of them
2 are --
3 MS. MCFADDEN: Factual.
4 THE COURT: -- the factual allegations, and we heard
5 this during the trial. But then on 19 it talks about prior to
6 his arrest being convicted of a felony offense, and then it
7 goes through what they were. Are you challenging these
8 convictions as well? Paragraph 19 on page 11.
9 MS. MCFADDEN: Your Honor, there was a juvenile
10 arrest that we're challenging, not the other arrests. My
11 client advises me he was never convicted of burglary.
12 THE COURT: Well, but 19(a) is manufacture, delivery,
13 sale, and possession of a Schedule II controlled substance,
14 and 19(b) is possession of less than .5 grams of cocaine with
15 intent to manufacture, sell or deliver.
16 MS. MCFADDEN: Your Honor, I must have made a
17 mistake. It's paragraph 56 that's listed.
18 THE COURT: Well, I haven't gotten there yet. I was
19 going through your 8 through 21. But are you including 19 in
20 all of that?
21 MS. MCFADDEN: No, your Honor.
22 THE COURT: Okay.
23 MS. MCFADDEN: I'm sorry. Like I said, it's been a
24 long time since I wrote that.
25 THE COURT: Well, I apologize. I just saw it today.

5
1 MS. MCFADDEN: No. I apologize too. I didn't
2 realize nobody got it, otherwise I would have ensured.
3 Your Honor, with the Court's permission, I have a
4 copy of the letter on my phone. So Mr. Koshy and I are able
5 to --
6 THE COURT: And you're going to need some time to go
7 through it because I want you to respond to these things as
8 well. Let's just come back in 15 minutes.
9 MR. KOSHY: I'll be ready whenever the Court is
10 ready. Is it possible I could get a copy of the letter?
11 THE COURT: Yeah.
12 MR. KOSHY: And maybe if we could file that as part
13 of the record maybe.
14 THE COURT: Okay. Let's just come back in 15
15 minutes, and let me know what your response is to those
16 things. All right? Okay. Thanks.
18 (Brief recess.)
20 THE COURT: Thanks. Y'all can be seated. Well, go
21 ahead if you've got something to say.
22 MR. KOSHY: Only if the Court needs something.
23 THE COURT: Yeah. Hang on one second. Here's what I
24 want to do: I would like to clear the courtroom and talk to
25 Mr. Young and Ms. McFadden because I've got some questions for

6
1 them. So if everybody can step out, and we're just going to
2 leave these two in here along with the marshal's office.
3 (Whereupon, everyone instructed to exit the courtroom
4 complied, and the proceedings continued ex parte.)
5 - - -
6 (Whereupon, those instructed to exit re-entered the
7 courtroom and the proceedings continued.)
8 THE COURT: Okay. Mr. Koshy, you were about to have
9 responses.
10 MR. KOSHY: Yes. First of all, your Honor, could we
11 please make the June 30th, 2014, letter a part of the record
12 in some way?
13 THE COURT: Yeah.
14 MR. KOSHY: Thank you. As far as the objection to
15 the summary of a very long trial and the few paragraphs of the
16 presentence report, this Court presided over the trial itself
17 and surely is relying on its memory of the actual evidence
18 rather than a summary. But to the extent it's necessary, we
19 believe that the defendant's objection is too general to
20 address.
21 I think the only pertinent portion of the second
22 sentence of the letter is the simple fact that the defendant
23 does not object to paragraph 19, which is the prior drug
24 felonies. And, of course, the same felonies are reiterated in
25 paragraphs 41 and 43 and further on in the presentence report.

7
1 And there's no objection to those paragraphs.
2 THE COURT: Right. And Ms. McFadden told me that 36
3 was a misstatement. She's not objecting to 36, which was the
4 enhancement paragraph that circles back around and picks up
5 those same prior convictions. Okay.
6 MR. KOSHY: The objection to paragraph 24, which is
7 that he should receive the two- or three-level credit for
8 acceptance of responsibility because he pled guilty to the
9 felony possession is addressed by Sentencing Guideline
10 1B1.4(a)(5). And that's the rule that provides for the
11 sequence by which the various calculations in the guidelines
12 are to be applied. As you go through everything and then you
13 apply the grouping rules, and only after that, is there the
14 consideration of acceptance of responsibility.
15 So what that basically means is you can't just admit
16 guilt or accept responsibility in some manner on one facet of
17 an overall crime and thus be entitled to acceptance of
18 responsibility on the overall crime. It's clear he hasn't
19 accepted responsibility for the overall conduct because even
20 in this letter he continues to object to his -- to the facts
21 which the jury may have used. So he has not clearly accepted
22 responsibility, and it's his burden to show that he has
23 accepted responsibility.
24 As to paragraph 30 -- and basically that's the
25 paragraph that deals with the calculation leading to the

8
1 1.4 kilos of crack. First of all, the objection is
2 immaterial. That calculation has nothing to do with either
3 the guideline offense level or the statutory penalty
4 applicable in this case.
5 The proof there basically goes through some calls
6 that were played at trial accounting for about $40,000 of
7 transactions, and then there was the $10,000 found under
8 Mr. Young at the time of the take-down at the Shell gas
9 station. The 40 and the call, the 10, leads to the 50. The
10 proof at trial was that the defendant initially was getting
11 crack cocaine from Mr. Porter and then switched to getting
12 cocaine, learning how to cook it, manufacturing crack cocaine
13 by which he could bring back extras basically on the crack
14 cocaine. He could produce more than an ounce of crack cocaine
15 from an ounce of cocaine.
16 So that's the gist of that proof there. So he took
17 the $50,000 by about a thousand dollars an ounce and came up
18 to a crack equivalency calculation. Even if the cost per
19 ounce was inflated somewhat to let's say $1200 an ounce, which
20 would reduce the actual ounces applicable, even that
21 20 percent increase in the value of the cocaine would not
22 bring the crack cocaine amount down below the threshold.
23 In any case, the defendant was a career offender, so
24 the offense level is 37, regardless of the 35 listed as the
25 offense guideline for the $50,000 worth of crack cocaine.

9
1 Therefore, the offense level 35 is also moot and immaterial.
2 It's still from an offense level 37.
3 As to paragraph 56, I have -- and, again, it's
4 immaterial. There's no points. There's nothing for this.
5 It's an unadjudicated juvenile arrest for burglary and
6 vandalism. Probation officer relies on a record which either
7 she has or I have, which is from, I believe, the juvenile
8 court showing arrests for burglary and vandalism. Again,
9 that's something that I don't believe the Court has to make a
10 particular determination on. We've shown the document to
11 Ms. McFadden over the break.
12 And probation office on paragraph 72 is certainly
13 agreeable to changing month to week as the 200- to $300 in
14 earnings.
15 THE COURT: Okay.
16 MR. KOSHY: Paragraph 89 is the denial of federal
17 benefits. That accurately quotes the guideline. Regardless
18 of that, under the statute that's cited in paragraph 88, it's
19 not just may deny. Congress has determined that the Court
20 must deny. That's the government's specific response to the
21 objection. I think the government's basic point, however, is
22 that none of it matters. And under the appropriate rule,
23 which I can't remember the actual rule, the Court must make
24 determinations on any objections made unless the Court
25 determines that those objections don't affect the sentence to

10
1 be imposed. And I think that's the situation here.
2 That's all I have unless the Court has --
3 THE COURT: No. That's it. I agree with you that
4 none of those objections, particularly where you take out the
5 objection to paragraph 19 and 36. The others don't make a
6 difference, and if they do, somebody will tell me later.
7 Now, I understand under the case of United States v.
8 Booker, sentencing guidelines are not mandatory. They're
9 advisory. And I'm not bound to impose sentences within those
10 guidelines. Rather, I can look at the 3553 factors and
11 fashion a sentence that's sufficient but not more harsh than
12 necessary. That's out the window here. The sentence that
13 everybody knows is coming is certainly more harsh than is
14 necessary, and I wish it was not that way.
15 Mr. Young was convicted on four counts, conspiracy to
16 distribute and possess with intent to distribute 500 grams or
17 more of cocaine and 280 grams or more of crack cocaine,
18 attempted possession of a detectable amount of cocaine with
19 intent to distribute within a thousand feet of a school,
20 possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking
21 crime, and being a felon in possession of a firearm.
22 Using the 2013 edition of the guideline -- except for
23 the factual allegations, there was no objection to the actual
24 calculation itself; is that correct?
25 MS. MCFADDEN: Other than the things that were

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1 mentioned.
2 THE COURT: All right. Okay. Ultimately end up with
3 a total offense level of 37. The criminal history, except
4 with regard to the objection that was noted, it won't make any
5 difference, establish 6 points, which put him in a category 3.
6 But the career offender designation makes his category,
7 criminal history category, 6. And there were no objections to
8 that except as noted.
9 I noted from the PSR Mr. Young was born in
10 Clarksville in 1988. He's had no relationship with his
11 father, and I don't believe anyone knows where his father is
12 at this moment. His mother had her own substance abuse
13 problems, spent time in and out of jail, although she
14 currently resides in Clarksville and is unemployed. Both he
15 and his mother have significant physical problems. He had a
16 biological brother who appears to have committed suicide, that
17 he was close with that brother.
18 There were issues of domestic abuse in the home when
19 his mother remarried. For all intents and purposes, by the
20 time he and his brother were 13 and 17, they were left to
21 their own devices, which you see from his criminal history
22 really starts the downward spiral.
23 He has sickle cell anemia. He's got some chronic leg
24 pain, no history of mental health issues. There was some
25 history of substance abuse beginning back in high school. He

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1 claims he does not have a drug problem now and perhaps he
2 hasn't had one for several years.
3 He has a G.E.D. He attended some modeling and acting
4 classes and was an aspiring rap artist, which also led to his
5 involvement, I think, with people that he clearly should not
6 have been involved with.
7 He has little or no work history. There was some
8 time at the family funeral home and doing some packing jobs.
9 He has no ability to pay a fine.
10 Ms. McFadden, do you have any proof to introduce?
11 MS. MCFADDEN: No, your Honor.
12 THE COURT: Okay. Mr. Young, you have the right to
13 address the Court, speak on your own behalf. You don't have
14 to exercise that right, but the federal rules certainly allow
15 for it.
16 THE DEFENDANT: First and foremost, I'd like to say
17 thank you, your Honorable Judge Sharp, and to the courts for
18 letting me speak today. I hope everyone here has been having
19 a good morning.
20 I wish we had the time to -- first of all, I did not
21 write anything like you suggested because I didn't want to be
22 untruthful. I wanted to be solemnly sincere, coming from my
23 heart and not from my brain. I wish we had the time to
24 one-on-one, tete-a-tete, but since we don't, I'll try to make
25 this substantive.

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1 My first plea of guilty was for my gun charge.
2 Before I was found guilty at trial I had planned on coming
3 here impressing you, Judge Sharp, leaving you disposed to me,
4 showing you that these four years I've been incarcerated I've
5 been studious with my time taking copious notes. To
6 accomplish this I was going to speak on a variety of topics,
7 one of which being American history.
8 I'm familiar that William Penn purchased Pennsylvania
9 from the Delaware Native Americans, how Washington disbanded
10 the troops in 1783, how March 16th, 1783 Washington delivered
11 the speech that made the troops avert their plans --
12 THE COURT: I don't want to interrupt you. Can I
13 stop you for a second and slow you down a little bit so that I
14 can catch what you're saying. I want to listen to you, and,
15 also, the court reporter has to take it down.
16 THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir.
17 THE COURT: You may have a speed that you have to do
18 this in, but if you can slow down, it would help me because I
19 want to hear what you have to say.
20 THE DEFENDANT: And thank you for listening.
21 -- how Pass and Stow recast the Liberty Bell the
22 first time it was cracked, how Federic Bartholdi designed the
23 Statue of Liberty, how John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both
24 died on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of
25 Independence July 4, 1826, how Constantino Brumidi consummated

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1 the fresco of George Washington that's at the Capitol in 1865,
2 how the beginning of the 20th century the whole world was in
3 civil and political uproar leading to the assassination of a
4 few political figures, including our own 25th President,
5 McKinley, how in 1913 the Federal Reserve system was
6 established, how in 1934 the SEC was established.
7 I'm familiar with President Nixon and the Watergate
8 scandal, how 1960 and 1970 was the greatest economical decade
9 in out country's history, the GNP normally doubling and nearly
10 tripling. I'm familiar with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald
11 Reagan's theory on the government's role in society, the 1987
12 Wall Street crash; how the beginning of the nineties, like
13 around 1992, America changed the way it kept up with its
14 economical data, switching from the GNP to the GDP.
15 And I'm familiar with all 27 Amendments having
16 memorized and can summarize them if I was asked. I'm familiar
17 with the original Declaration of Independence that was printed
18 by John Dunlap, and if given a chance to be released within a
19 reasonable amount of time, I can do something remarkable and
20 epic like Thomas Lynch, Jr., and Edward Rutledge, the two
21 youngest men that signed the Declaration at the modest age of
22 27; or like Nick D'Aloisio, the teenager who sold his company,
23 Summly, to Yahoo the beginning of 2013 for 300 million; or
24 like David Clark, who sold his company, Tumblr, to Yahoo in
25 2013 for a billion dollars, whom of which was 26 years old, a

15
1 high school dropout with no further education; or like
2 Alexander Graham Bell, who was 29 when he patented and
3 exploited the telephone. But I'm not going to focus on that.
4 I was going to speak on how I've read the notes or
5 biographies and researched and just studied some of the
6 greatest historians, writers, philosophers, scientists, and
7 great thinkers in recorded human history, such as Xenophon,
8 Herodotus, Diotrephes, Heraclitus, Hermes Trismegistus,
9 Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Zeno,
10 Zoroaster, Confucius, Laozi, Antipida, Avicenna, Averroes,
11 Aquinas, Copernicus, Tycho, Kepler, Leibniz, Newton,
12 Descartes, Spinoza, Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci,
13 Machiavelli; King John and the ordinances he placed inside the
14 Magna Carta.
15 Sir Francis Bacon, whom -- which was very loyal to
16 Queen Elizabeth and King James, and some of his philosophies
17 and doctrine were the foundation for the Royal Society;
18 Voltaire; Paracelsus, who actually was not named that but
19 changed his name to that by action that was meaning to be
20 demeaning and disparaging to the life and career of
21 successors; Benjamin Franklin; Heisenberg; Einstein; the Bohr
22 scientists, father and a son; Soren Kierkegaard; Friedrich
23 Nietzsche; Fyodor Dostoyevsky; Jean-Paul Sartre; James Adams;
24 William Chancellor; C.P. Snow; Jan Christian Smuts.
25 I've also studied some financiers and economists who

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1 were also philosophers in their own right, such as Steven Grod
2 (phonetic), who was the richest man in America in his time;
3 John Pierpont Morgan, who was the founder of the Bank JPMorgan
4 and also had something to do with Morgan Stanley getting
5 started; Andrew Carnegie, whose philanthropic activities
6 account for opening over 2500 libraries in Canada, America,
7 and Europe and also for donating up to $300 million; Mayer
8 Rothschild, who showed the correlation between energy and
9 economics and also founded the International Banking House of
10 Rothschild.
11 John Maynard Keynes, whose economic philosophy and
12 doctrines have been the foundation for the IMF, the
13 International Monetary Foundation -- Fund, and whose economic
14 philosophy was dubbed the Keynesian Theory and has been a
15 playbook for the Federal Reserve the last couple of years
16 during its accommodative monetary policy; Pierre Samuel du
17 Pont de Nemours, who was a politician and a scientist and who
18 pushed his friend, our third President, Thomas Jefferson, for
19 a national education system, which never took hold in America
20 but it did in France, and whose son, Eleuthere DuPont, also
21 started and founded the company DuPont that we know today;
22 James Mill and his son, John Stuart Mill, who also pushed
23 America for a public education system.
24 James Smithson who bequeathed his riches to his
25 nephew but left a clause in there that if he didn't have any

17
1 progeny, for him to leave it to America, which founded the
2 Smithsonian Institution and owns a couple of libraries and
3 museums; and Franco Modigliani, 1985 Nobel Prize winner in
4 economic science and Alfred Nobel himself, who started the
5 prize to promote the advancement of civilization and good will
6 towards humanity, who actually wrote the five categories for
7 the award to be nominated in on a half of a notebook -- I mean
8 half of a napkin in a Swedish country club just two weeks
9 before his death.
10 Your Honorable Judge Sharp, I actually could probably
11 answer any question about these individuals' life or their
12 work, at the least summarize their work, but I'm not going to
13 focus on that. I was going to speak on philology. I love to
14 look at the etymology and semantics of a word, but I'm not
15 going to focus on that.
16 I was going to speak on how I continue my studies of
17 the human anatomy that my grandfather started me on, but I
18 center it primarily on the human epithelial, the gustatory
19 senses, the ocular senses, the olfactory senses, and acoustic
20 senses. But I'm not going to focus on that.
21 I was going to speak on my love for financials and
22 how I'd like to become an R.A. and get into wealth management
23 once I'm released and how I keep up with a slew of corporate
24 CEO's, including Marissa Mayer of Yahoo, Tim Armstrong of AOL,
25 Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Dick Costolo

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1 of Twitter, Elon Musk of Tesla, Reed Hastings of Netflix, Bob
2 Iger of Disney, Blake Irving of godaddy.com, Satya Nadella of
3 Microsoft, Steve Cannon of the U.S. arm of Mercedes, Sergio
4 Marchionne of Fiat and Chrysler, Carlos Ghosn of
5 Nissan-Renault, Indra Nooyi of Pepsi, Muhtar Kent of
6 Coca-Cola, Bernard Arnault of LVMH, which owns luxury brands
7 like Christian Dior, Mark Jacobs, Louis Vuitton, Moet
8 Hennessy, Dom Perignon; Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan, Greg Creed of
9 Yum! Brands, which owns restaurants like Pizza Hut and Taco
10 Bell, KFC; Patrick Doyle of Domino's, Bill Simon and Doug
11 McCormick (sic) of Wal-Mart, Mary Barra of GM.
12 I could name CEO's for days or how I keep up with a
13 group of businessmen, fund managers and investors, such as
14 Stephen Schwarzman, Carl Icahn, Ray Dalio, David -- Don
15 Yacktman, Cliff Asness, Larry Robbins, Bill Ackman, Bill
16 Gross, David Miller, Mohamed El-Erian or how I simulated a
17 paper portfolio with the average of daily returns of 7 to 10
18 percent and weekly returns of 10 to 15 percent.
19 I'm familiar with the foreign trading platform and
20 try to keep up with the various currencies trading, such as
21 the Chinese Yuan, the Japanese Yen, the Korean Won, the
22 European Union's Euro, the UK's pound, the Turkish Lira, the
23 American Dollar, the Australian Dollar, the various different
24 types of pesos, the Indian Rupee.
25 I love hearing commentary from Alan Greenspan and

19
1 Paul Volcker, both former Federal Reserve chairmen. I try to
2 keep up with Christine Lagarde and her comments. She's the
3 president of the IMF; Mark Carney, who is the governor of the
4 Bank of England. I do follow Mario Draghi and the ECB and its
5 pecuniary actions and policies. I try to keep up with the
6 FEC, the FTC, the FEC, the DOJ and its investigations and
7 rulings, and I've even got one of my girlfriends to buy me a
8 syllabus on corporate law. But I'm not going to focus on
9 that.
10 I was going to speak on how I'm familiar with some
11 few politicians that are in executive and legislative
12 branches, such as Speaker of the House, John Boehner;
13 Secretary of State, John Kerry; Secretary of Defense, Chuck
14 Hagel; Secretary of the Treasury, Jack Lew; Tennessee Senators
15 Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, the latter of which is part of
16 the Senate Banking Committee; Senate Majority and Minority
17 Leaders Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid. But I'm not going to
18 focus on them.
19 The one politician I would like to speak on is former
20 Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, and I'm not going to
21 speak on whether Lawrence Summers should have stayed a
22 candidate or whether Don Kohn would have been a better
23 nomination than Janet Yellen. But what I would like to speak
24 on is some comments he made last year in a May and July
25 meeting regarding the labor force participation rate and the

20
1 unemployment number, the fact that the longer an individual
2 stays without work, his knowledge, skills, and training and
3 ability become languid.
4 And this also leads me to speak on different surveys
5 and polls that have been conducted that shows the recidivism
6 rate is higher amongst individuals that have been incarcerated
7 for long periods of time and how even I myself do not believe
8 that it takes 30, 20, 15 or even 10 years for a person to
9 realize he done something wrong and he need to find a more
10 decorous way to go about it.
11 Your Honorable Judge Sharp, as you know, I stand
12 before you today facing a life sentence based on two prior
13 felony convictions I obtained at the young tender age of 18,
14 which were intangible, one of which was the simple possession
15 of less than .5 grams, less than .5 grams.
16 Your Honorable Judge Sharp, you've seen enough drugs
17 in your day to know that's barely enough for an addict or user
18 to strike their lighter once and it's gone.
19 Speaking of addicts and users, if you don't mind, I'd
20 like to take this time to reflect on my childhood real quick,
21 your Honor. As you know or can see in my appearance or
22 probably can see from there, I have tattoo on my neck that
23 says feel my pain. Now, why did I get something like that
24 tattooed in such a conspicuous place? Because when I was
25 younger and more immature, I wanted people to look past my

21
1 handsome looks, to acknowledge I was intrepid and to
2 acknowledge the fortitude I had to possess to deal with the
3 adversity in my life.
4 As you know and I've spoke on before, I have a
5 disease called sickle cell anemia. It's a blood condition you
6 have to be born with, which takes your blood cells from the
7 normal shape to a sickle shape, which makes you rheumatic and
8 locks your body up and causes excruciating pain. So when I
9 was a child, I spent a lot of time in the hospital and up
10 under my mother, which in so many ways and words made me a
11 mother's boy, which also can help you imagine the pain I felt
12 watching her struggle with her addiction and domestic violence
13 in her various relationships. And it also had me feel like I
14 need to prove myself. I was told I couldn't do this, you
15 can't play this sport, you can't do that, you can't drink this
16 liquid, you should only drink water. It made me feel I need
17 to prove myself a lot.
18 Like I've hinted and like you know, my mother had a
19 very extreme addiction to crack cocaine, which led her to
20 raising us in some of the severe and most critical conditions
21 a child should be raised in in America. We spent a
22 significant amount of time living with no lights and water.
23 When it was wintertime, she heated the house with kerosene.
24 When it was nighttime, she lit the house with candles.
25 So then just try to imagine two young kids, one of

22
1 which almost a teenager, my brother, going to school with
2 holes in our shoes, their skin smelling like musk and grass
3 from playing outside the day before, their clothes too small
4 or in my case too big because most of the time I was trying to
5 wear my brother clothes, and the clothes smelling like
6 kerosene from being in the house. Combine these two scents
7 and imagine the malodorous smell we was carrying to school
8 with us each and every day. Imagine what your opinion would
9 be upon first meeting us.
10 Imagine the emotion and anguish that me and my
11 brother dealt with at a young tender age, more so my brother
12 because most of the time I did not have the appropriate meal
13 unless my brother came upon some money and went to one of the
14 local neighborhood restaurants or stores and bought something
15 and came home and shared it. A lot of times I didn't have
16 bathed unless my brother sucked up his pride and asked one of
17 his friends in the neighborhood could we bathe at their house
18 or asked one of the neighbors could we bathe at their house,
19 and not to mention at this time my brother was going through
20 puberty. And he was wanting to deal with young ladies, but he
21 was too dissident and insecure to approach them, not to
22 mention the occasional argument and fight a child has to deal
23 with when he's a teenager, but more so my brother because he
24 had to take up for his obstreperous young brother, which is
25 me. I didn't know when to shut my mouth at times when I was

23
1 younger.
2 Well, like I said, we lived like this for a
3 significant amount of time, so it became brutal about the
4 conditions we were living in until a woman that was very close
5 with us, who was a good friend of my biological grandmother
6 before she passed, Ms. Dorothy Brown, offered us to come live
7 with them. As time went on, me and my brother began to love
8 and revere Ms. Brown as our grandmother and started to call
9 her the nickname that everybody in the neighborhood called
10 her, which was Big Mama, the most appropriate name for a
11 generous and benign woman like her, you know.
12 But you also have to take into consideration she
13 already had four kids living with her, her nieces and nephews.
14 So adding me and my brother, this makes seven individuals
15 living in a three-bedroom house with one bathroom surviving
16 off a minimum wage paycheck. So even though Big Mama was able
17 to help provide us with the necessities like food, heat,
18 water, and shelter, she was not able to provide us with
19 material things that young teenagers and kids needed and
20 wanted, not to mention at the end of the day Big Mama was only
21 human.
22 So it was times that we would catch her talking out
23 loud questioning herself. Why am I going through this? Why
24 am I putting up with this? Which only added to the emotional
25 void that me and my brother felt, a void that a lot of people

24
1 feel either when they're real young or when they get real old,
2 that sense of loneliness. You know what I'm saying? And this
3 only increased at a time when me, my mother, and my
4 grandfather girlfriend happened to pull up on a crime scene
5 and witnessed my cousin being put into an ambulance from a
6 gunshot wound to the head. This was very traumatic for me to
7 witness at a young tender age of 10, but it was even harder
8 for my brother to accept given the fact that my cousin was one
9 of the only true brothers and father figures my brother had.
10 But eventually as time went on we filled this emotional void
11 because we got a sense of family and camaraderie from the guys
12 in the neighborhood who was going through struggles just like
13 us but just probably was not as severe and dire as me and my
14 brother's situations.
15 And as time went on, by the time we became teenagers,
16 my brother, a middle aged teenager, and me just now becoming a
17 teenager at the age of 13, my father came back into my life.
18 Now when I say my father, Judge Sharp, as you know and as we
19 spoke on, I don't mean my biological father whom I've never
20 met or even seen a picture of, couldn't tell you if he was
21 standing in this courtroom right here today. But the person I
22 do love and revere as my daddy is George Rudolph, my mother's
23 ex-husband, whom we call Mickey.
24 He offered for me and my brother to come live with
25 him because he was better off financially than Big Mama. But

25
1 at the same time even though we accepted, me and my brother
2 had a great deal of resentment built up for my father because
3 we didn't understand how if you truly loved us you let us go
4 through these years of torment growing up in the hood, as we
5 called it, not to mention at this time most of the teenage
6 guys in my neighborhood had made their life change in
7 transition and decision and began selling drugs, taking
8 ordinary poverty stricken teenagers to being able to buy and
9 don the best clothes, taking ordinary broke teenagers and
10 being able to take the girlfriends to the movies and the high
11 school basketball games and football games and buy them chips,
12 candy, and pizza, and if you was good at it, taking a young
13 ordinary working broke teenager and making them be able to buy
14 a car and buy jewelry.
15 Given the fact that my brother was a young teenager
16 and had a child on the way, a young lady or young daughter to
17 be exact, my niece, he was one of these teenagers that made
18 his life changing decision. Me at the time, I actually
19 eschewed drugs. I hated them. I tried to stay away from
20 them, and I tried to exert my energy towards the things that
21 other young teenagers was doing at the time, like playing
22 sports. But given the fact of my physical condition and my
23 disease and the fact I was not good at it, just didn't last
24 very long. But I was a precocious young man, and I loved
25 scholastic material. So I tried to focus on my academic work.

26
1 But given the fact that it's hard to focus on a
2 textbook that's in front of you when you're staring at the
3 young lady sitting in front of you, your Honor, so it was
4 during this time where I started to engage with young ladies.
5 But it was hard for me to get the women given the fact that I
6 did not sell drugs. It was hard for me to compete with the
7 other guys on impressing the young ladies.
8 So it was around this time that I tried to focus on
9 my finances. But, like I said, I hated drugs, so I tried to
10 do it the right way. But the only workers you see in my
11 community are proletarians, which is actually not appealing to
12 me, and I was too young to work in a factory. I was actually
13 too young to even work in fast food, so given this fact I went
14 to the only man and the only business I knew would hire me,
15 which was Hooker's Funeral Home, my grandfather's funeral
16 home, Mr. Hooker. And depending on who you ask and their
17 definition, some of them would say my grandfather was
18 successful or rich. He owned several funeral homes in
19 Tennessee and several other small businesses.
20 But given the fact that my grandfather -- it took for
21 me to get older and more mature for me to realize that my
22 grandfather did love us because I had a great deal of
23 resentment and thought he did not love us because how could
24 you be clad in tailor-made suits and jewelry and drive a
25 Mercedes and Cadillacs and we're growing up in the hood

27
1 struggling. And it took more me to grow older and more mature
2 and for my grandfather to pass -- while I was locked up he
3 passed away in 2012 -- for me to realize he did love us. He
4 just chose to love us in his own way, given the fact that all
5 the years he had to deal with my mother and my uncle stealing
6 and lying and just denigrating his name. He just chose to
7 love his grandkids from a distance.
8 But upon my proposal he did accept me and did give me
9 a job at the funeral home teaching me small parts of the
10 business and small parts of science, such as the human
11 anatomy, which I was very intrigued by. But it was one
12 problem. My grandfather only paid me a pittance, a small,
13 measly $200 a month, which was barely enough to buy a pair of
14 Jordans, your Honorable Judge Sharp. And I don't know if you
15 ever bought a pair of Michael Air Jordan tennis shoes. They
16 start at 150- to $170, which was barely enough for me to be
17 able to have other money to do things on the side, not to
18 mention around this time I began to feel that loneliness
19 again, that emotional void.
20 I felt like I was losing the only family I had, which
21 was my brother and the guys in my neighborhood. Because I did
22 not sell drugs I was not allowed to hang at the different
23 spots with them no more. I was not allowed to broach
24 different topics and participate in different conversations
25 with them anymore, so it was around this time that I did

28
1 attempt to sell drugs.
2 But given the fact that my brother always felt like
3 my guardian angel and my protector, he tried to stop this.
4 But once he seen how the future was in my efforts, he gave me
5 an ultimatum. He told me every time I see you me and you are
6 going to fight or just simply buy the drugs from me and hustle
7 with me out of my drug house, which happened to be my mother's
8 house while she was incarcerated. I chose the latter given
9 the fact that by this time my brother and the guys in my
10 neighborhood were quasi successful buying multiple ounce
11 quantities of crack cocaine and cocaine.
12 It wasn't hard for me to climb up in the latter,
13 which led to me being revered in some type of way, but at the
14 same time I did not do the same things everybody else did. I
15 didn't squander my money. I actually did things that people
16 kind of only see in movies. I took it upon myself to be
17 financially responsible for several of my little cousins who
18 father was incarcerated.
19 The kids in the neighborhood knew if that caught me
20 on report card day, that they could get some money from me for
21 their grades. The geriatric and elderly people in my
22 neighborhood knew that if they caught me at the local grocery
23 store or the little stores or neighborhood restaurants, I
24 would pay for their items. And if they caught me in the
25 neighborhood, I would help them out around the house or at the

29
1 least pay a wino or a drug addict to help them out around the
2 house. This led to me being extolled in some type of way.
3 And even with all this praise, me and my brother was
4 still just kids. I was 15. He was 18, which led to us still
5 making some reckless and perilous decisions, which led to the
6 Clarksville Drug Task Force having a search warrant for my
7 mother's house. But this day I happened to be in school, and
8 this day my brother actually had no drugs in the house. But
9 given the fact that my brother name was on the search warrant
10 and the police did happen to find an ounce and a half of crack
11 and cocaine, my brother claimed the drugs and end up with a
12 lengthy time on probation.
13 Given the fact that I knew who the drugs truly
14 belonged to, I was left feeling guilty and ashamed and
15 obligated to help my brother in any type of way. So it was
16 around this time that I did try to change my life. I started
17 attending acting and modeling school and began rapping, began
18 attending most of the make shift studios around the city.
19 This was around the time that I formed a relationship
20 with the individual Robert Porter, and it was rumored that he
21 was building a more up-to-date and more sophisticated studio.
22 And he confided in me the truth and told me that he was
23 building a studio and that if I continued to make good music
24 and didn't mind releasing my music under the LameBoy
25 Entertainment logo, that any record deal him or the record

30
1 label came about, that I would be a part of that record deal.
2 So I continued making my music, and I continued to hang with
3 Robert Porter.
4 I know you don't like rap music, your Honor, Judge
5 Sharp. I'm pretty sure of it.
6 THE COURT: How do you know that?
7 THE DEFENDANT: But if you was to listen to my first
8 CD, it's a mixed tape, as we call it. If you was to listen to
9 it, I'm redundant because I stress the fact I wish me and
10 everyone around me could change their lives. I wished that,
11 and I stressed that in my music. It was also around this time
12 that me and Robert Porter began feeling like we was local
13 neighborhood celebrities, Clarksville superstars.
14 And it was around this time that my brother was going
15 through the hardest emotional time of his life because by this
16 time my brother had served a couple small stints for petty
17 violations of his probation. He was dealing with his
18 querulous baby mother who actually was always complaining and
19 used his child as a bargaining chip for him to get her the
20 things she wanted, but at that time my brother was not selling
21 drugs. My brother was actually trying to do the right thing.
22 He was working two jobs, but they were dead end jobs barely
23 paying him minimum wage. And most of the money he had was
24 going towards his daughter, not to mention at this time he was
25 also having to deal with the banter and the sneering of his

31
1 peers. And we all know how cruel young 20-year-olds can be.
2 Now, imagine young 20-years-olds with tens of thousands of
3 dollars, not to mention he had to deal with the belaboring of
4 his younger brother, which I was only trying to exhort him but
5 led to being disparaging and helped lead him to be more and
6 more deeper in his anguish.
7 Around this time is when I happened to come to my
8 mother's house to check on him and something else, and I
9 happened to find my brother laying in a pool of blood from a
10 gunshot wound to the head. This was very traumatic and very
11 severe for me to witness. I was only 18. But unlike
12 everybody else in my extended family and in the neighborhood,
13 I didn't want to argue over whether it was a suicide or a
14 robbery attempt turned into a murder. All I knew was that the
15 only person that truly loved me unconditionally and truly was
16 there for me all of my life was dead and gone. All I knew was
17 that the only person that truly, no matter what, had
18 understood everything I had been through was dead and gone.
19 And, most important, I felt obligated, obligated to
20 take care of my niece to the utmost and to supply her with any
21 and everything I could get her with, which is something that
22 the arresting officers could attest to given the fact that my
23 car was filled with presents and gifts for a young child
24 because it was close to Christmastime we got arrested. Your
25 Honor, Judge Sharp, all of that happened in the year 2007, the

32
1 exact year that I caught three-fourths of all my charges, the
2 year I was a fresh 18, and that was the past.
3 I'd like to fast forward back to the present, and I'd
4 like to just speak on some things that make me feel
5 ambivalent, the fact that I can help some guys in my pod study
6 for their G.E.D., for them to come back and tell me thanks,
7 soldier, I couldn't have done it without you, for me to be
8 conversing with the guards on the way back from court to give
9 them some tips on how to allocate their IRAs and 401-Ks and
10 for them to tell me, Wow, Chris, I did not know that, thanks;
11 for my friend getting into some trouble, for him to write me,
12 for me to write back and for him to respond thanks, bro.
13 It's amazing how encouraging you can be despite your
14 own situation. For my niece in Christmas of 2012, when she
15 was ten years old, to tell me, Uncle, Mama didn't give me
16 everything I wanted, but it's okay. I know as soon as you get
17 out you'll take me shopping. My little cousin in Christmas
18 2012 he was actually 13, and he told me, Chris, Mama didn't
19 really get me nothing for Christmas. But it's all right. I
20 know if you was here, you would try to help. These things
21 made me feel proud of the man I am but despondent regarding
22 the fact that I cannot be there to help myself, my family or
23 even my community because I know if I was given a chance to be
24 released back into society within a reasonable amount of time,
25 your Honorable Judge Sharp, I could help show my community the

33
1 importance of attending city council meetings and continued
2 referendums.
3 I could be the example for a man recently released
4 from prison who's trying to get his life on track and provide
5 for his family financially all while staying out of trouble.
6 I could be their pathosis (phonetic) for a young man coming up
7 in the inner city, ghetto or hood, or whatever you want to
8 call it, who's trying to provide for himself and his family
9 all while remaining true to himself on how he earns the money,
10 all while averting the trappings that come with his
11 environment.
12 The television, the media, and entertainment is
13 glorified because, your Honorable Judge Sharp, he don't see
14 anybody that's successful in his community unless they're a
15 big time drug dealer or a rapper who claims he was a big time
16 drug dealer before he became a rapper. He couldn't tell you
17 who Mr. Donald was, the CEO of Carnival Cruise Lines which
18 owns -- Carnival Corporations which owns the Dublin Cruise
19 Lines. He couldn't tell you that he's a black man, and he
20 could be successful like him. He couldn't tell you that
21 Mr. Thomson, the CEO of McDonald's, which is one of the
22 biggest franchises in the world, is a black man, and he could
23 be successful like him. He couldn't tell you that Ken
24 Chenault, the CEO of American Express, a large financial
25 provider, is a black man, and he could be successful like him.

34
1 He couldn't tell you Richard Parsons, the ex-CEO of
2 Time Warner, ex-chairman of Citigroup, and the current CEO of
3 the Los Angeles Clippers during the turmoil. He couldn't tell
4 you that he's a black man, and he could be successful like
5 him. He couldn't tell you that Ms. Ursula is a black woman,
6 the CEO of Xerox, a leading technology company, and he should
7 be aiming to have a girlfriend or a wife like her, not Nicki
8 Minaj. He couldn't tell you the same.
9 He probably couldn't even tell you any predominant
10 black man in American history. He couldn't tell you of
11 Thurgood Marshall or Richard Humphreys or Carter G. Woodson or
12 George M. James or Joseph Rainey -- actually, Joseph Rainey
13 was the first black man to be part of the House of
14 Representatives. He couldn't tell you who these people are.
15 He couldn't tell you what a Tesla car was, let alone who the
16 scientist, Nikola Tesla, was. He couldn't tell you what the
17 difference between a regular engine or a diesel engine, let
18 alone who the scientist, Rudolf Diesel, is. This hypothetical
19 young man gets on Google every day, your Honor, but he looks
20 up something inane and frivolous, and he can't tell you who
21 Larry Page or Sergey Brin is, the founders of Google, at a
22 time in our country, Judge Sharp, when most economists,
23 politicians, and journalists constantly speak on income
24 equality and income mobility -- income inequality and income
25 mobility.

35
1 Two of the main factors they cite for the disparity
2 is being raised in a single-parent household instead of
3 parents that are married or being raised in a low-income
4 poverty-stricken neighborhood. And to sum both of these
5 factors up together into one, Judge Sharp, it boils into
6 influences, the influences that a person is around. And if I
7 was given a chance to be released back into society within a
8 reasonable amount of time, I know I could be a positive
9 productive person. I could be a positive influence on these
10 young men and women in my neighborhood. I could be the person
11 that helps teach them the financial literacy that I actually
12 feel is not adequately taught in the high schools.
13 I feel like instead of being forced to read
14 Shakespeare, we should be forced to read essays by Adam Smith
15 and Thomas Malthus, latter of which stressed the effects of
16 population on the economy, which might make them more
17 conscious about teen pregnancy. I feel like I could be there
18 to help provide for them financially and not just giving them
19 free money because Andrew Carnegie said it the best.
20 Dispossession of wealth should never come in the form of free
21 charity. It should serve as a buttress for the community to
22 take responsibility of its own welfare. And I'd just help
23 teach these young men and women how to be successful and, most
24 important, how to be happy.
25 And the vignette I've just given you, your Honorable

36
1 Judge Sharp, is a pivot of what our policy was established
2 for, for a man to be able to live free, be happy, and be
3 successful. But if he's caught making wrong actions and
4 decisions, he can and will face a penalty and a punishment.
5 That penalty and punishment is in hopes of rehabilitating him,
6 in hopes of rehabilitating him.
7 Your Honorable Judge Sharp, I have been
8 rehabilitated. As you know, I've just spent four years in a
9 jail, in a pod, where ignorance is proliferated. I'm talking
10 about it's just ridiculous. But I've stayed dedicated,
11 determined, and disciplined to learn the things I feel that I
12 need know and wanted to know to help me become a positive,
13 productive, successful, law-abiding citizen.
14 Your Honorable Judge Sharp, the times I've been
15 around you I have grown to believe that you're a sapient man
16 who even was jovial during a tense situation where leading
17 attendance of the defendants and a jury, and for that I thank
18 you. All I'm asking, your Honor, is that you please
19 acknowledge my ambition, my order, and my potential, and that
20 if I was given a chance to be released back into society
21 within a reasonable amount of time, I could accomplish and
22 achieve my aspirations and hopefully go down in the ranks with
23 some of the men I admire the most, such as Reginald Lewis,
24 Robert Johnson, Henry Kravis, Christopher Gardner, Shawn
25 Carter, Dr. Robert Sheldon, Nicholas Berggruen.

37
1 And there's one more thing I'd like to address while
2 I'm speaking to the Court. This right here is directed to
3 Mr. Sunny Koshy. Mr. Sunny Koshy, I have no hard feelings for
4 you. I actually think you're a great attorney. You're
5 extolled and venerated throughout the Sixth Circuit, even by
6 the defense, even though they might feel minimal towards you.
7 Judge Sharp, I don't know what your profession is or
8 the trajectory of it, but hopefully you realize I was a young
9 man, a young child, who actually wanted to be like Indiana
10 Jones. I loved Indiana Jones, but I wasn't told I can be an
11 archaeologist or an anthropologist. I was told, child, that
12 isn't real. You can't be that, expletive. You know what I'm
13 saying. To be a teenager who felt like he needed to take
14 responsibility of his own life and end up making some choice
15 that did prove I was financially responsible but made some
16 choices and also came to some consequences and repercussions
17 to now I'm a man, a man who has matured, a man who has become
18 versed within the focal points of knowledge. Now, I'm not a
19 man who knows everything, but I am a man who has the aptitude
20 and the comprehension and skills to learn everything and
21 utilize it.
22 I'm a man who's made plans and goals, a man who has
23 become conversant with finance and economics, a man who could
24 elucidate on why Peter A. Diamond and Dale Mortensen and
25 Christopher Pissarides won in 2010 the Nobel Prize for

38
1 economic science speaking on the effects the policies and
2 regulations has on the economy.
3 I'm a man who could expound the new Dodd-Frank laws
4 that's being implemented on the banks. I'm a man who could
5 explain profoundly the Kering trade (phonetic) and why and how
6 policy and regulation here in developed countries like America
7 have major effects on emerging markets and countries.
8 I'm a man who is not biased or prejudiced in any type
9 of way. I could listen to the tape recordings of President
10 Nixon during the Watergate Scandal, which you can listen to on
11 wikileaks.com and listen to him make derogatory comments about
12 black people but still remain indifferent, but still
13 acknowledge he's a great businessman, especially during the
14 eighties when he was a head director of the business
15 roundtable -- a man who has become a lover of fine art and
16 hopes to become an avid collector one day. And if I was took
17 to an auction or an art show, I probably could point out a
18 Bondone or Durer or Greene or Brueghel the Elder, Henri de
19 Toulouse-Lautrec, Bellini, a Venite, Michelangelo, a Leonardo
20 da Vinci, a Raphael, who actually died at the young tender age
21 of 32, a Bosch or Basquiat, a Van Gogh or Rembrandt or Warhol
22 or William Blake, who was also a poet and a critic, who some
23 would call an iconoclast.
24 I'm a man who clearly loves history. I hope to
25 become a collector of rare artifacts one day, whether it be

39
1 something as simple as a horse saddle that George Washington
2 rode at Mount Vernon to a telescope that Benjamin Franklin
3 once used, to some of the pages out of Isaac Newton's notebook
4 that they found at Cambridge or a desk that William
5 Wilberforce once owned and probably drafted one of his letters
6 to the British Parliament that helped them abolish slavery in
7 the UK, a suit that Oliver Cromwell and Napoleon once wore, a
8 knife that Genghis Khan once had, a bow and arrow that Attila
9 the Hun probably once had, a cup that Caligula or Nero once
10 drunk wine out of or some jewelry that one of the great
11 pharaohs once owned, whether they be Ramses, Senusret,
12 Sneferu, Khufu, Zoser, Akhenaten or even Menes.
13 Most important, your Honorable Judge Sharp, I'm a
14 man, a man who has grown to acknowledge and realize the
15 importance and the power of volition. And with my free will
16 and with my choice, I choose to be a positive, productive,
17 successful, law-abiding citizen if given the chance.
18 As you can see, I've been practicing this for some
19 months now, about a year. I had it memorized, but to actually
20 get up here and speak to you -- I could visualize you in my
21 head all day long, but to actually look at you and to see you
22 look at me back in my eyes as a man and how I feel a man
23 should speak to another man, it kind of caught me and had me
24 stumbling a little bit. But what I do want to say is thank
25 you for letting me speak, and I want to say thank you for

40
1 treating me like a man and looking at me like a man because
2 some people, they naturally look at us like we're something
3 else just because we've made mistakes and we've ended up on
4 the other side of the law. So I want to say thank you for
5 listening to me, and I hope everyone here has a good evening.
6 THE COURT: All right. Thank you, sir. I appreciate
7 your words. I will say this: When I was about your age,
8 somebody told me about C.P. Snow, who you mentioned in there.
9 When you get a chance, read "The Masters" or "The
10 Malcontents," a couple of great books that he wrote. Also,
11 you mentioned Genghis Khan. There's a good book called
12 "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World." You want
13 to read that when you get a chance. All three of those are
14 really good. You might want to start with Genghis Khan. It's
15 a little easier to read. But you'll enjoy it. I appreciate
16 it. Thank you for speaking to me.
17 All right. Ms. McFadden, anything you want to add to
18 that? As if there is anything you can now add.
19 MS. MCFADDEN: That's a tough act to follow, your
20 Honor. I don't know what else to say. The Court has noted
21 his PSR. The Court has heard from Mr. Young. I think if the
22 Court were free to just use the 3553(a) factors, his --
23 Mr. Young's ambitions might be realized. However, the Court
24 is not free to do that. We would ask, as Mr. Young brought up
25 earlier, that the Court recommend BOP place him in a facility

41
1 where he can get treatment for his sickle cell anemia as well
2 as his leg and also to recommend to the marshals and BOP to
3 move Mr. Young as soon as possible to a facility where he will
4 be instead of the county jail where he's been for four years.
5 THE COURT: Okay. Thank you. Mr. Koshy.
6 MR. KOSHY: Mr. Young mentioned a lot of people that
7 I know nothing about. This Court and the defendant are much
8 better read than I. I live in the gutters, and I see the pain
9 the defendant has caused all those people during this life in
10 this conspiracy. That's what this is about. That's why
11 Congress has enacted the laws that it has.
12 Out of all of that, we heard nothing. Of all that
13 reading and thinking that he did, did the Court hear one thing
14 that recognized that the things that got him reverence in that
15 community, which was drug dealing, is profiting from causing
16 other families the same kind of pain that he went through.
17 He saw the effects of what he was doing in his own
18 life and in his brother's life and his mother's life. He
19 talked about his mother's addiction to crack. That's how
20 his -- by the things that he did he gained the reverence in
21 the community. And when he talks about role models, he, as a
22 drug dealer, was a role model to the community leading others
23 astray. That's what this is about, and that's why these law
24 enforcement officers work so hard, risk their lives, to bring
25 this conspiracy to an end.

42
1 In just six months, June to December of 2010, this
2 defendant was responsible for over $40,000 of crack cocaine
3 dealing and there within a thousand feet of the Genesis Teen
4 Learning Center, a school that the defendant must have known
5 about. He was well familiar with Robert Porter's studio,
6 which is in that same building. Genesis Teen Learning Center,
7 which the proof at trial, is for troubled youth. He decided
8 to further commit armed drug trafficking in a specially
9 protected zone, a loaded Ruger in a ten thousand dollar effort
10 to get cocaine that the defendant was going to cook into crack
11 cocaine.
12 So we're not talking about a nickel and dime drug
13 dealer on the street corner. This is a person focused on
14 finances with improving his lot in life at the expense of
15 others. He had chances through the judicial system. He could
16 have been in prison and maybe he should have been earlier, but
17 he was granted community corrections and was on community
18 corrections under the supervision of the judge, a probation
19 officer, when he did all of this.
20 Not here to -- there's no gloating involved in a life
21 sentence, neither is there any apology. We're simply here to
22 execute the law. The defendant had choices along the way. He
23 took his chances. Just like every time he went out there with
24 a gun and dealt crack, he took his chance, and he get away
25 with it for a very long time. And if not for this

43
1 investigation, that's exactly what he would have been doing.
2 So I'm here simply to ask the Court to execute the
3 laws as they are written, to impose the sentence required by
4 law, but I wanted to bring some other perspective to all this
5 that the defendant has said and through doing so cause the
6 defendant to think, while serving his life sentence, of really
7 why he is there. It is because of his choices and his
8 willingness to harm others to make a profit for himself.
9 And I think it is in the Harmelin case that I cited
10 in one of my pleadings, one of the Supreme Court justices, I
11 believe, in that case said something to the effect of this
12 notion that drug dealing is a victimless non-violent crime
13 is -- and these aren't his words, but it's his sentiment -- is
14 absolute rubbish. The defendant hurt people along the way to
15 make money, and now is the time to impose the sentence
16 required by law because of his choices. Thank you. That's
17 all I have, your Honor.
18 THE COURT: All right. I'll now state the sentence.
19 The attorneys have an opportunity to object before it's
20 imposed.
21 The statutory provisions on Counts 1 and 11 are as
22 we're all well aware of, mandatory life sentences. Count 12
23 is at least five years to run consecutively. Count 13 is not
24 more than ten. Based on the total offense level of 37,
25 Category 6 criminal history, guideline range is 36 months to

44
1 life. Because of the mandatory life sentences the guideline
2 range becomes life.
3 Mr. Young is a career offender also convicted on
4 Count 12, which requires five years consecutive. So the
5 guideline provision becomes life plus 60 months. Supervised
6 release range is ten years to life on Counts 1 and 11 -- makes
7 no sense -- not more than five years on Count 12 and not more
8 than three on Count 13. Guideline range is ten to life, two
9 to five years on Count 12, one to three years on Count 13.
10 Probation is not authorized. Statutory fine range not more
11 than $20 million on Counts 1 and 11, 250 on 12 and 13,
12 guideline range is 20,000 to 40 million. Restitution is not
13 applicable on Count 1, 12, and 13. Community restitution can
14 be ordered on Count 11. Special assessment of a hundred
15 dollars on each count is mandatory, so it's a total of $400.
16 We've got multiple counts, and so we still need to go
17 through the 3553 factors. And I've considered them.
18 Unfortunately, on 1 and 11 there's only one of the factors
19 that matters, and that's the range established by statute. As
20 I said earlier, none of the other factors would weigh in
21 terms -- would weigh in favor of or toward a sentence of life
22 imprisonment. But with regards to Counts 12 and 13, in the
23 event 1 and 11 are set aside, I have looked at the nature and
24 circumstances of those offenses, your criminal history and
25 character. I look at the need to impose a sentence that

45
1 reflects the seriousness of those offenses, promotes a respect
2 for the law, provide a just punishment and deterrence to
3 others.
4 I've looked at the statutory ranges considering the
5 ranges and the guideline range for those and a need to avoid
6 an unwarranted sentencing disparity which, back to 1 and 11,
7 the disparity with regard to your punishment on those two
8 counts is way out of whack with the punishment of the others,
9 nevertheless, on 12 and 13 to look for a sentence that's
10 sufficient but not more harsh than necessary.
11 And recognizing the clear precedent that's out there,
12 there's -- the law is what the law is, so I recognize that
13 each situation is unique. Each defendant is supposed to be
14 treated as an individual. I don't think that's happening
15 here, but you are sentenced to a term of imprisonment in the
16 custody of the Bureau of Prisons for life on Counts 1 and 11.
17 Those will run concurrently. 60 months on Count 12 that has
18 to run consecutively and 60 months on Count 13 which will run
19 concurrently. There's no supervised release on 1 and 11.
20 There will be 60 months on Counts 12 and 13. Those will run
21 concurrently. Your fine a waived. There's no restitution.
22 You've got a mandatory special assessment of $400. The
23 standard conditions of your release will apply. The special
24 conditions are on page 29 of the PSR. Maybe somebody can fix
25 this.

46
1 Pursuant to U.S. v. Bostic, any objections?
2 MS. MCFADDEN: None that haven't already been raised,
3 your Honor.
4 THE COURT: All right. The sentence is imposed.
5 MR. KOSHY: Your Honor, I hate to interrupt.
6 THE COURT: Do you have an objection?
7 MR. KOSHY: May I have just a moment?
8 (Brief Pause.)
9 MR. KOSHY: Sorry, Judge. On Count 13 -- on Count 12
10 and 13 the Court simply said 60 months concurrent -- I'm
11 sorry. Let me start over.
12 THE COURT: Right; on supervised release or --
13 MR. KOSHY: I've confused myself.
14 THE COURT: No, no. I said concurrent on supervised
15 release. Consecutive on 12, which gets into life plus 60;
16 right?
17 MR. KOSHY: Yes, your Honor. I misspoke. I think
18 the Court said on Count 13 60 months, and you just said
19 concurrent. And I wanted to verify. I think under the law it
20 can certainly be concurrent with Counts 1 and 11 and cannot be
21 consecutive.
22 THE COURT: Correct. That's right.
23 MR. KOSHY: Sorry.
24 THE COURT: That's right. No, 1 and 11.
25 PROBATION OFFICER: Your Honor, I have a different

47
1 matter.
2 THE COURT: Okay.
3 PROBATION OFFICER: Supervised release runs
4 concurrent on all counts. However, I think you imposed 60
5 months on Count 13, and the maximum is three years per statute
6 on Count 13.
7 THE COURT: Correct. You're right. You're right.
8 It's three and five. I misspoke on that. It's -- let me go
9 back. Yeah, it's 60 months on Count 12 and 36 months on Count
10 13 to run concurrently.
11 PROBATION OFFICER: That's correct, your Honor.
12 Thank you.
13 THE COURT: Okay. All right. I apologize.
14 Mr. Young, do you have something to say?
15 THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir. She already ended it. I
16 would greatly appreciate it if you could recommend I go to
17 some type of facility where I can get to the form and get my
18 hips, legs, and waist fixed. I'm not exactly for sure what's
19 wrong. I never took notice to my posture up there. It was
20 not meant to be disrespectful on posture or anything like that
21 but my leg, if you lift my pants leg up, you can see that --
22 THE COURT: That's all right. I'll make those
23 recommendations for you.
24 THE DEFENDANT: I would greatly appreciate it. Thank
25 you.

48
1 THE COURT: All right. Thank you.
3 (Whereupon, the proceedings were adjourned at 12:08
4 p.m.)
5 - - -
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49
1 REPORTERS CERTIFICATE
4 I, Wynette C. Blathers, Official Court Reporter for
5 the United States District Court for the Middle District of
6 Tennessee, with offices at Nashville, do hereby certify:
7 That I reported on the Stenograph machine the
8 proceedings held in open court on August 28, 2014, in the
9 matter of UNITED STATES OF AMERICA V. CHRIS YOUNG, Case No.
10 3:11-CR-00012-27; that said proceedings in connection with the
11 hearing were reduced to typewritten form by me; and that the
12 foregoing transcript (Pages 1 through 48) is a true and
13 accurate record of the proceedings.
14 This the 19th day of September, 2014.
15
16
17
18 _______________________________
/s/ Wynette C. Blathers, RMR, CRR
19 Official Court Reporter
20
21
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23
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25

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1

1 IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

3 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, )

18 For the Defendant: HALLIE MCFADDEN

Case 3:11-cr-00012 Document 2325 Filed 09/19/14 Page 1 of 49 PageID #: 11965

1 The above-styled cause came on to be heard on August

2 28, 2014, at 10:35 a.m., before the Honorable Kevin H. Sharp,

3 when the following proceedings were had, to-wit:

4 COURTROOM DEPUTY: All rise, please.

5 The United States District Court for the Middle

6 District of Tennessee is now in session, the Honorable Kevin

8 THE COURT: Thanks. Y'all can be seated. All right.

10 here in the sentencing in the case of United States v. Chris

11 Young. Everyone has had a chance to read the presentence

13 MS. MCFADDEN: Yes, your Honor.

14 MR. KOSHY: Yes, your Honor.

15 THE COURT: Okay. I don't think there were any

16 objections. I know you've got your outstanding appeals on the

17 conviction itself, but you didn't have any objections to the

19 MS. MCFADDEN: I did, your Honor. Again, mostly they

20 were factual, and I sent it by letter to Ms. Winfree on

22 THE COURT: The last thing I have says defense

23 counsel advises there's no objections to the presentence

24 report except defendant does not accept his guilt by jury

25 verdict on Counts 1, 11, and 12. That's the last thing I

Case 3:11-cr-00012 Document 2325 Filed 09/19/14 Page 2 of 49 PageID #: 11966

2 MS. MCFADDEN: I have my copy, your Honor. I'd be

4 THE COURT: Let me look at them. Have you seen

5 these, Mr. Koshy?

6 MR. KOSHY: I must have at some point.

7 THE COURT: Okay.

8 MR. KOSHY: I don't recall specifically.

9 THE COURT: Well, take a look at them first.

10 MS. MCFADDEN: It was sent by email to everybody, but

11 I would be more than happy to --

12 THE COURT: I just didn't get it. Were they --

13 MS. MCFADDEN: It was a document I know Ms. Winfree

14 had a hard time opening and emailed me, and I sent it in a

16 Your Honor, may I approach?

17 THE COURT: Yeah. Well, this isn't just factual,

18 though. You're objecting to the calculation of the offense

19 level on at least one of the counts; right?

20 MS. MCFADDEN: That's correct, your Honor.

21 THE COURT: Well, you object to 8 through 21, but

22 you're not objecting to 19; right? This is just going through

23 his criminal history.

24 MS. MCFADDEN: Your Honor, I'm sorry. What --

25 THE COURT: On paragraph 19 you objected to 8 through

Case 3:11-cr-00012 Document 2325 Filed 09/19/14 Page 3 of 49 PageID #: 11967

1 21. I'm just going through these paragraphs. A lot of them

3 MS. MCFADDEN: Factual.

4 THE COURT: -- the factual allegations, and we heard

5 this during the trial. But then on 19 it talks about prior to

6 his arrest being convicted of a felony offense, and then it

7 goes through what they were. Are you challenging these

8 convictions as well? Paragraph 19 on page 11.

9 MS. MCFADDEN: Your Honor, there was a juvenile

10 arrest that we're challenging, not the other arrests. My

11 client advises me he was never convicted of burglary.

12 THE COURT: Well, but 19(a) is manufacture, delivery,

13 sale, and possession of a Schedule II controlled substance,

14 and 19(b) is possession of less than .5 grams of cocaine with

15 intent to manufacture, sell or deliver.

16 MS. MCFADDEN: Your Honor, I must have made a