What constitutes a 'separate course of conduct' in the discretionary sentencing context?

QUESTION PRESENTED This Court’s decisions (as best Boyle can research) have not defined or applied in the discretionary sentencing context, and apart from any Guidelines applications, what constitutes a, “separate course of conduct.” Herein, the District Court, and the 7" Circuit, found that Boyle’s sexual assaults of a child and the sharing of a video of the sexual assaults, by uploading to social media, were a separate course of conduct from state charges arising out of the same conduct, even though the victim was the same child, the crimes occurred in the same place, and the interval between the sexual assault prosecuted by the State of Illinois, and the uploading to social media of the (second) sexual assault (prosecuted in the federal District Court for the Central District of Illinois), was one day. The District Court’s finding that the State and Federal crimes were a separate course of conduct and the affirming of that finding by the 7” Circuit, were the sole reason cited by the District Court judge for imposing a 50-year sentence consecutive to the Illinois State Court sentence of 40 years incarceration for the sexual assault that occurred the day before the production and sharing charged in the federal indictment i (19-cr-20019 CD IL). As the District Court noted in its sentencing colloquy, “If he [Boyle] manages to live to be a 126 years old (sic), then he can have that fresh air that he requests today.” (Trans., USA v. Gary Boyle, 19-cr-20019, CD IL, 1-14-21). The question presented, what defines separate course of conduct, is the inside-out of ‘same course of conduct’ discussed in Justice Thomas’ dissenting in part in United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220, 315 (2005). The Guidelines, the dissent noted, referred to a common scheme or plan without placing arbitrary limits on space or time in determining ‘same course of conduct.’ Id. But herein the District Court and the 7” Circuit artificially and arbitrarily parsed Boyle’s criminal acts without regard to the available facts or existing 7 Circuit and sister circuit’s holdings on separate course of conduct, as more fully discussed herein below. il