[PUBLISH] In the United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit

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No. 22-10502 ____________________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, versus DEUNATE TAREZ JEWS,

Defendant-Appellant.

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Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama D.C. Docket No. 1:20-cr-00211-CLM-SGC-1 ____________________ USCA11 Case: 22-10502 Document: 32-1 Date Filed: 07/06/2023 Page: 2 of 13

22-10502 Opinion of the Court 2

Before WILSON, NEWSOM, and LAGOA, Circuit Judges. NEWSOM, Circuit Judge: It’s an axiom of American sentencing law and policy: You do more crimes, you do more time. The United States Sentencing Guidelines observe that norm. But they make certain allowances for juvenile convictions. Sometimes, those get excused—erased from the rap sheet, as it were. Accordingly, distinguishing adult from juvenile convictions can be important. So it is here. Deunate Jews, who pleaded guilty to illegally possessing a firearm in violation of federal law, was sentenced to 60 months in prison based on a Guidelines range of 70–87 months. In calculating Jews’s range, though, the district court concluded that an earlier Alabama youthful-offender adjudication constituted an “adult” conviction within the meaning of the applicable Guidelines provisions. Jews contends that the court erred in doing so. Jews is right. His Alabama YO adjudication wasn’t an adult conviction. Because the district court miscalculated Jews’s Guidelines range, we vacate his sentence and remand for resentencing. 1 I After Jews pleaded guilty in 2021 to being a felon in possession of a firearm in violation of federal law, see 18 U.S.C.

1Because Jews is scheduled to complete his sentence in August 2023, the parties and the district court are directed to proceed to next steps immediately. USCA11 Case: 22-10502 Document: 32-1 Date Filed: 07/06/2023 Page: 3 of 13

22-10502 Opinion of the Court 3

§ 922(g)(1), the district court sentenced him to 60 months in prison. In arriving at that number, the court began (as it should have) by consulting the Sentencing Guidelines. See Rosales-Mireles v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 1897, 1904 (2018) (“District courts must begin their analysis with the Guidelines.”). To derive a Guidelines range, the court had to compute Jews’s “offense level” and then sort him into a “criminal history category.” See U.S.S.G. ch. 5. The district court initially set Jews’s base offense level at 24—applicable to defendants with “at least two [prior] felony convictions of either a crime of violence or a controlled substance offense.” U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(a)(2). According to the Guideline’s commentary, a qualifying “felony conviction[]” must (for someone in Jews’s situation) be an “adult federal or state conviction for an offense punishable” by at least a year in prison. Id. § 2K2.1 cmt. 1. 2 Jews’s two predicate “felony convictions,” the court concluded, were (1) a 2014 Alabama adult co