Case ID: f-appx_601/html/0050-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Isaac FRANCES, a/k/a Jacques Frances, Defendant-Appellant.
    No. 14-1756.
    United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.
    March 27, 2015.
    
      Harvey L. Greenberg, Greenberg & Wil-ner, LLP, New York, NY, for Appellant.
    Drew Johnson-Skinner (with Brian A. Jacobs and Kathryn Martin) for Preet Bharara, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, New York, NY, for Appellee.
    PRESENT: DENNIS JACOBS, RAYMOND J. LOHIER, JR., Circuit Judges, GARY L. SHARPE, District Judge.
    
    
      
       The Honorable Gary L. Sharpe, Chief District Judge for the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York, sitting by designation.
    
   SUMMARY ORDER

Isaac Frances appeals from an amended judgment entered on May 2, 2014, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Seibel, J.), revoking his term of probation and sentencing him to a term of four months’ imprisonment and three years’ supervised release. We assume the parties’ familiarity with the underlying facts, the procedural history, and the issues presented for review.

In 2009, after a guilty plea, Frances was sentenced principally to a term of five years’ probation. During his probationary period, Frances was arrested and charged, in state court, with sexual assault. Based on these charges, the Probation Office petitioned the district court to revoke his probation. Frances, who was ultimately acquitted of the charges in state court, denied the specifications set forth in the petition to revoke his probation. Prior to an evidentiary hearing, the parties agreed that the government bore the burden of proof by a preponderance of the evidence.

Observing that this was a very close case, the district court ultimately found that the government sustained its burden of proving, by a preponderance, four of the five specifications charged against Frances. On appeal, Frances challenges the sufficiency of the evidence that supported revocation of his probation and the reasonableness of the sentence imposed.

“On appeal we will reverse the district court’s finding of a violation of probation only if the district court has abused its discretion.” United States v. Lettieri, 910 F.2d 1067, 1068 (2d Cir.1990). “The district court need only be reasonably satisfied that a probationer has failed to comply with the conditions of probation to revoke a sentence.” United States v. Colasuonno, 697 F.3d 164, 181 (2d Cir.2012) (internal quotation marks omitted). We have not expressly considered whether the preponderance standard always satisfies the “reasonable satisfaction” standard, and have no occasion to do so here. Frances has waived any challenge to the revocation of his probation on that ground. Although the district court acknowledged that this case is a close one, its findings of fact were not clearly erroneous and we therefore reject Frances’s sufficiency challenge. See id. at 181; see also United States v. Iodice, 525 F.3d 179, 185 (2d Cir.2008).

Frances’s challenge to his sentence is without merit. The district court appropriately considered the factors set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) and this Court will not “substitute [its] own judgment for the district court’s on the question of what is sufficient to meet the § 3553(a) considerations in any particular case.” United States v. Cavera, 550 F.3d 180, 189 (2d Cir.2008) (in banc). The sentence imposed was both procedurally and substantively reasonable.

For the foregoing reasons, and finding no merit in Frances’s other arguments presented on appeal, we hereby AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.