Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-10-03069/USCOURTS-caDC-10-03069-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Lee Ayers
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued April 9, 2015 Decided July 31, 2015

No. 10-3069

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

APPELLEE

v.

LEE AYERS,

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:08-cr-00364)

Beverly G. Dyer, Assistant Federal Public Defender, 

argued the cause for appellant. With her on the briefs was 

A.J. Kramer, Federal Public Defender.

John V. Geise, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the cause 

for appellee. With him on the brief was Ronald C. Machen,

Jr., U.S. Attorney at the time the brief was filed, and 

Elizabeth Trosman and Elizabeth H. Danello, Assistant U.S. 

Attorneys.

Before: BROWN, PILLARD and WILKINS, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge WILKINS.

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WILKINS, Circuit Judge:

Federal law disparately treats equal weights of powder 

and crack cocaine. The “crack/powder disparity” has been the 

subject of numerous lawsuits and policy proposals; it has 

reached the Supreme Court and been debated in Congress. 

This case presents an apparently novel question: whether a 

district court must consider the crack/powder disparity before 

deciding whether to assign concurrent or consecutive 

sentences to a defendant. The defendant in this case sought to 

convince the District Court that it should assign concurrent 

sentences in order to account for the difference between the

twelve-year sentence to which he agreed in a plea agreement 

and the three to four years that the United States Sentencing 

Guidelines would have recommended had he been caught 

with powder cocaine instead of crack cocaine. The District 

Court was unconvinced, noting, among other things, that 

Congress enacted a ten-year mandatory minimum sentence 

for this offense, and ordered the defendant’s sentence to run 

consecutive to a previously imposed sentence. 

The gravamen of the defendant’s challenge on appeal is 

that the District Court adopted a constrained view of its 

discretion and that this constraint led the District Court to 

impose a consecutive rather than a concurrent sentence. 

Although we agree that the District Court misinterpreted one

aspect of the statute related to the assignation of concurrent or 

consecutive sentences, we find it clear from the record that 

this error did not materially affect the District Court’s 

decision. We also reject the defendant’s other challenges to 

the District Court’s reasoning. We therefore affirm.

I.

In September 2008, Lee Ayers was arrested after a highspeed chase through residential areas of the District of 

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Columbia. The chase began when Metropolitan Police 

Department (“MPD”) officers attempted to conduct a traffic 

stop of Ayers’s vehicle. Rather than pulling over, Ayers 

accelerated in an attempt to flee. He fled for several blocks, 

at one point driving the wrong way down a one-way street, 

before losing control of his vehicle and crashing. J.A. 17.

A few days later, MPD officers executed a search warrant

for the vehicle. Police found a bag inside the vehicle 

containing 98.1 grams of crack cocaine, a Beretta 9mm

handgun, ammunition, a glass cooking pot with cocaine 

residue on it, and $3,800 in cash. Police also recovered a 

Glock 27 handgun, a scale with cocaine residue on it, zip-lock 

bags, and three grams of marijuana. J.A. 18.

A federal grand jury subsequently returned a four-count 

indictment against Ayers: one count of possession with intent 

to distribute 50 grams or more of cocaine base in violation of 

21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) & (b)(1)(A)(iii); one count of using, 

carrying, and possessing a firearm during a drug trafficking 

offense in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1); and two counts 

of unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition by a 

felon in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). J.A. 10-12. 

Because Ayers had previously been convicted of possession 

with intent to distribute cocaine, he was subject to sentencing 

enhancements under 21 U.S.C. § 841(b) that could result in a 

mandatory minimum of 20 years imprisonment for the drug 

charge alone. J.A. 13.

On April 1, 2010, Ayers entered into a Rule 11(c)(1)(C) 

plea agreement in which he agreed to a 144-month sentence 

for possession with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of 

crack cocaine. He also acknowledged that he had possessed 

the two firearms and ammunition at the time of his arrest and 

conceded that all of the government’s charges were based in 

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fact. In exchange, the government agreed to request dismissal 

of the three firearm-related counts of the indictment. J.A. 21-

24; see FED. R. CRIM. P. 11(c)(1)(A). The parties also 

“agree[d] that [Ayers] may request for the agreed-upon 

sentence to run concurrent to any other applicable sentence 

[he] may be serving, but that the Government may oppose 

such a request.” J.A. 22. This last provision was relevant 

because of Ayers’s 2009 conviction in the Superior Court of 

the District of Columbia of several counts related to “an urban 

warfare-style shootout,” for which he was sentenced to nine 

years in prison. J.A. 29-30. Ayers made clear, both at the 

plea hearing and in his sentencing memorandum, that he 

intended to argue for a concurrent or partially concurrent 

sentence based on the crack/powder disparity and changes in 

law related to this disparity. J.A. 42-43, 85.

The District Court held a sentencing hearing in July 

2010. The only contested issue at the hearing was whether 

Ayers’s twelve-year federal sentence should run consecutive 

to or concurrent with his nine-year Superior Court sentence. 

Ayers argued that a concurrent or partially concurrent 

sentence was appropriate in order to account for the 

punishment disparity between crack and powder cocaine. The 

District Court rejected this argument. In the course of making 

its sentencing decision, the District Court concluded that the 

law contained a presumption of consecutive sentences for 

separate crimes and that assigning fully concurrent sentences 

would undercut the ten-year mandatory minimum Ayers faced 

for the offense to which he pled guilty. J.A. 127-29. Having 

found that the defendant’s history and the circumstances of 

the crime justified fully consecutive sentences, the District 

Court also rejected Ayers’s request for partially concurrent 

sentences.

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Ayers contends that the District Court misinterpreted the 

law as expressing a presumption in favor of consecutive 

sentences and being incompatible with concurrent sentencing. 

He also argues that the District Court wrongly determined that 

the parties should have negotiated the question of concurrent 

or consecutive sentences as part of the plea agreement and 

therefore improperly refused to take into account the 

crack/powder disparity. We review his claims in turn.

II.

A.

“Judges have long been understood to have discretion to 

select whether the sentences they impose will run 

concurrently or consecutively with respect to other sentences 

that they impose, or that have been imposed in other 

proceedings, including state proceedings.” Setser v. United 

States, 132 S. Ct. 1463, 1468 (2012). This discretion is 

guided by 18 U.S.C. § 3584(b), which provides that “[t]he 

court, in determining whether the terms imposed are to be 

ordered to run concurrently or consecutively, shall consider, 

as to each offense for which a term of imprisonment is being 

imposed, the factors set forth in section 3553(a).” The 

§ 3553(a) factors include “the nature and circumstances of the 

offense and the history and characteristics of the defendant,” 

“the need for the sentence imposed to reflect the seriousness 

of . . . and to provide just punishment for the offense,” “the 

kinds of sentences available,” and “the need to avoid 

unwarranted sentence disparities among defendants with 

similar records who have been found guilty of similar 

conduct.” 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). When imposing a sentence, a 

district court is not required to explicitly address every factor,

see United States v. Simpson, 430 F.3d 1177, 1186-87 (D.C.

Cir. 2005), but a sentencing decision is normally remanded 

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where the district court “based its decision on an 

impermissible factor” such as a misunderstood statute, United 

States v. Dozier, 162 F.3d 120, 128 (D.C. Cir. 1998). 

However, “[i]f the party defending the sentence persuades the 

court of appeals that the district court would have imposed the 

same sentence absent the erroneous factor, then a remand is 

not required . . . and the court of appeals may affirm the 

sentence.” Williams v. United States, 503 U.S. 193, 203 

(1992); see also FED. R. CRIM. P. 52(a) (“Any error, defect, 

irregularity, or variance that does not affect substantial rights 

must be disregarded.”).

B.

Ayers argues that the District Court wrongly limited its 

discretion by determining that concurrent sentencing ran 

counter to a statutory presumption in favor of consecutive 

sentencing and would undercut the mandatory minimum 

regime. While we agree that the District Court misinterpreted

18 U.S.C § 3584(a) as “hav[ing] embedded in it a 

presumption in favor of consecutive sentences for separate 

conduct and offenses,” J.A. 127, we conclude that this error 

did not sufficiently affect the District Court’s exercise of its 

discretion to require remand and resentencing.

Our circuit has not yet considered whether § 3584(a) 

creates a presumption in favor of consecutive sentencing. 

Other circuits have arrived at conflicting understandings of 

the statute. Compare Espinoza v. Sabol, 558 F.3d 83, 92 (1st 

Cir. 2009) (“Espinoza was subject to the presumption in 

§ 3584(a) that his 1997 sentence was to be served 

consecutively to his 1987 sentence.”), and United States v. 

Shafer, 438 F.3d 1225, 1227 (8th Cir. 2006) (“When prison 

terms for multiple offenses are imposed at different times, the 

governing statute encourages consecutive sentencing.”), with

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United States v. Martin, 371 F. App’x 602, 606 n.2 (6th Cir. 

2010) (“Insofar as the government is suggesting that the 

statute somehow favors consecutive sentences, it is 

incorrect.”). Upon review of the statute’s text, statutory 

context, and legislative history, we are convinced that 

§ 3584(a) addresses only how sentencing orders are to be 

interpreted, and not how sentencing decisions are to be made.

“As always, we begin with the text of the statute.” 

Limtiaco v. Camacho, 549 U.S. 483, 488 (2007); United 

States v. Hite, 769 F.3d 1154, 1160 (D.C. Cir. 2014). In 

relevant part, § 3584(a) states that “[m]ultiple terms of 

imprisonment imposed at different times run consecutively 

unless the court orders that the terms are to run concurrently.” 

18 U.S.C. § 3584(a). Although the District Court’s confusion 

is understandable, nothing in this language directs a trial court 

to presume that imposing a consecutive sentence is the 

preferred option. Moreover, unlike other statutes establishing 

presumptions, this statute does not expressly indicate that a 

presumption applies. Compare id., with, e.g., id. § 1201(b) 

(in the context of federal kidnaping statute, “the failure to 

release the victim within twenty-four hours after he shall have 

been unlawfully seized . . . shall create a rebuttable 

presumption that such person has been transported in 

interstate or foreign commerce”), and id. § 3142(e)(2) (when 

a judicial officer considers whether a violent or repeat 

offender should be released pending trial, “a rebuttable 

presumption arises that no condition or combination of 

conditions will reasonably assure the safety of any other 

person and the community if such judicial officer finds that,” 

inter alia, the individual was on release pending trial when 

the crime occurred). Congress knows how to write a statute 

establishing a presumption; we hesitate to find an implied 

presumption where Congress has not done so. Cf. Astrue v. 

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Ratliff, 560 U.S. 586, 595 (2010); Hardt v. Reliance Standard 

Life Ins. Co., 560 U.S. 242, 252 (2010). 

The statute’s context reinforces the conclusion that 

§ 3584(a) is not meant to include a presumption in favor of 

consecutive sentencing. See Fitzgerald v. Barnstable Sch. 

Comm., 555 U.S. 246, 253 (2009) (“Our conclusions 

regarding congressional intent can be confirmed by a statute’s 

context.”). Section 3584(b), entitled “Factors to be 

considered in imposing concurrent or consecutive terms,” 

directs the court to consider the factors listed in § 3553(a). 

Neither § 3584(b) nor § 3553(a) sets forth a presumption in 

favor of consecutive terms for separate offenses. While 

expresio unius est exclusio alterius is not always a useful 

interpretive aid, the omission of any language suggesting a 

presumption from a statute expressly setting forth the relevant 

factors for a court to consider when deciding between 

concurrent and consecutive sentences is a strong indicator that 

Congress did not intend any such presumption to apply. Cf. 

Indep. Ins. Agents of America, Inc. v. Hawke, 211 F.3d 638, 

644 (D.C. Cir. 2000).

Though the statutory language provides the answer, we 

note that the legislative history is also clear. The Senate 

Judiciary Committee Report on the Comprehensive Crime 

Control Act of 1984 stated that “[s]ubsection (A) is intended 

to be used as a rule of construction in the cases in which the 

court is silent as to whether sentences are consecutive or 

concurrent, in order to avoid litigation on the subject.” See S. 

Rep. No. 98-225, at 127 (1983), reprinted in 1984 

U.S.C.C.A.N. 3182, 3310. This is consistent with the 

Supreme Court’s description of § 3584(a). See Setser, 132 S. 

Ct. at 1467 (“The first subsection of [§ 3584] . . . says when 

concurrent and consecutive sentences may be imposed, and 

specifies which of those dispositions will be assumed in 

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absence of indication by the sentencing judge . . . .”). In 

keeping with the broad discretion vested in trial judges at 

sentencing, we hold that § 3584(a) is neutral as to whether 

concurrent or consecutive sentences should be imposed.

The question now becomes whether the District Court’s 

error in misinterpreting § 3584(a) as establishing a 

presumption in favor of consecutive sentencing affected the 

District Court’s exercise of its discretion, thereby requiring 

the remedy sought by Ayers—remand for a new sentencing 

decision. In this case, the District Court gave a lengthy and 

detailed explanation for its sentence, after hearing extensive 

argument from the parties and reviewing their sentencing 

memoranda. Based on a comprehensive review of the 

sentencing proceedings, we conclude that the error does not

require remanding for resentencing.

C.

The first order of business for the District Court was to 

determine whether to accept the 11(c)(1)(C) plea agreement 

for a 144-month term of imprisonment. Both parties accepted 

the findings of the presentence investigative report, and based 

on the information in that report, the District Court calculated 

the Sentencing Guidelines range for Ayers’s conduct. Under 

the Sentencing Guidelines, a defendant is given an offense 

level and a criminal history score, and the suggested range of 

sentences is determined by cross-referencing the two scores 

on an index. Ayers pled guilty to possession with intent to 

distribute 50 grams or more of cocaine base, which carries an 

offense level of 30.1

 The crime involved dangerous weapons, 

adding two offense levels. Ayers accepted responsibility for 

his actions, however, leading to a three-level downward 

 1 The District Court performed all Guidelines calculations pursuant 

to the then-applicable 2010 version of the Guidelines manual.

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adjustment and a total offense level of 29. Because of his 

extensive criminal history—he was in fact on supervised 

release when he committed his latest crime—Ayers was at the 

top of criminal history category 5. The guidelines range was 

therefore 140 to 175 months. J.A. 91-93. 

The District Court gave both sides an opportunity to 

present their arguments with respect to the agreed-upon 

sentence. After hearing those arguments, based upon a 

variety of factors, the District Court found that the 144 month 

agreement was an appropriate sentence. The District Court 

noted that Ayers’s crime carried a ten-year mandatory 

minimum sentence and that had there been no plea agreement, 

the government could have enhanced the drug charge to 

change the mandatory minimum to 20 years based upon 

Ayers’s prior felony drug conviction, and that Ayers also 

would have been subject to a consecutive five-year mandatory 

minimum sentence for possessing a firearm during a drug 

trafficking offense. In other words, without the plea 

agreement, Ayers could have faced a sentence of no less than 

25 years if convicted of all of the charges. The District Court 

also took into account that the instant offense was a serious 

drug offense that involved the possession of multiple firearms 

and dangerous flight from the police. In addition, the District 

Court noted that Ayers committed this offense while he was 

on release for another offense and that Ayers had a lengthy 

criminal history that included violent offenses. The District 

Court noted that the 144 month agreement was within the 

Guidelines range, and that Ayers could have faced much more 

time had he not reached this plea agreement with the 

government. After consideration of the Section 3553(a) 

factors, the District Court concluded that 144 months was an 

appropriate sentence and accepted the Rule 11(c)(1)(C) plea 

agreement. J.A. 125-26.

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The District Court then turned to the issue of whether to 

make the twelve-year federal sentence fully or partially 

concurrent to the nine-year Superior Court sentence. Again, 

the parties were given an opportunity to present their 

arguments. Ayers’s primary argument was that the District 

Court should assign fully concurrent sentences to counteract 

the unwarranted disparity between sentences for offenses 

involving crack and powder cocaine. Ayers pointed out that 

the Guidelines calculation for the same amount of powder 

cocaine would have been in the range of three to four years, 

so he requested that the District Court make his federal 

sentence fully concurrent to the Superior Court sentence to 

account for the disparity. Ayers also argued that there was a 

relationship between the two offenses because some of the 

evidence from the Superior Court trial might have been used 

in the District Court; in particular, one of the handguns 

recovered from Ayers’s vehicle had been used in the shooting 

for which he had been sentenced in Superior Court. J.A. 113-

14. The Government’s primary response was that consecutive 

sentencing was appropriate because the instant offense was 

unrelated to the Superior Court sentence and that “it simply 

does not make sense and is not in the interest of justice to 

have that Superior Court sentence serve as a way to evade 

responsibility in this case.” J.A. 98. The government pointed 

out that a first offender pleading to this drug charge would 

face no less than the ten-year mandatory minimum sentence, 

so a fully concurrent sentence for Ayers, which would result 

in only three additional years imprisonment for this offense, 

would essentially reward Ayers for his commission of another 

serious crime. J.A. 96-8. The government had a powerful 

argument, because the Superior Court offense was a truly 

serious one, in which Ayers, his brother, and a third 

unidentified person engaged in a shootout with unknown 

individuals on a residential street—the kind of crime that 

terrorizes and destroys communities.

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During the exchange with the parties, the District Court 

stated its agreement with the prosecution’s argument that 

Section 3584(a) “basically contains a presumption for a 

consecutive sentence but leaves it in the discretion of the 

district court.” J.A. 102. As we held above, there is no such 

presumption, and this statement was error. However, 

throughout these arguments, the District Court also 

consistently acknowledged that it had full discretion to assign 

concurrent or consecutive sentences. See J.A. 97 (rejecting 

argument that Sentencing Guidelines contains presumption 

that “separate offenses deserve separate punishments”); J.A. 

99 (noting that “whether to impose the sentence concurrent or 

consecutive, is something that’s completely in my 

discretion”); J.A. 127 (“[B]oth sides agree that this decision 

on concurrent versus consecutive is at my discretion, and I 

think that is true.”).

When rejecting the request to make the federal sentence 

fully concurrent, the District Court indicated what it believed 

was the “most important[]” factor, and it was not the alleged 

presumption. J.A. 128. Instead, the District Court relied on 

its conclusion that in this instance running Ayers’s sentences 

fully concurrent would frustrate Congress’s intent that 

someone committing this offense should serve a mandatory 

minimum sentence of ten years. The District Court did not 

conclude that Congress required consecutive sentences, or 

indicate that it did not have discretion to make the sentences 

run concurrently; it instead declined to accept Ayers’s 

invitation to use concurrent sentencing as a way around the 

statutory mandatory minimum in this instance. The District 

Court agreed with the government’s contention that Ayers 

should not effectively benefit from having committed another 

serious and violent offense, J.A. 128, and this was a proper 

exercise of its discretion.

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In rejecting Ayers’s request for partially concurrent 

sentences, the District Court did not mention the alleged 

presumption at all. Instead, the District Court found that 

“there [were] plainly sufficient reasons for a 144-month 

consecutive sentence in this case given all the considerations 

of circumstances with respect to the defendant.” J.A. 129. 

Among these considerations were that Ayers had committed 

“an extremely serious crime with significant impact on the 

community” involving firearms and “reckless flight by the 

defendant that endangered himself and others,” J.A. 123, and

that Ayers “seems to have gotten very limited benefit, if any, 

from his prior contact with the criminal justice system,” J.A. 

124. The District Court acknowledged that it could be true to 

the ten-year mandatory minimum sentence and still make 24 

months of the federal sentence concurrent, but it declined to 

do so because it ultimately believed that a twelve-year 

sentence consecutive to the Superior Court sentence was 

appropriate for Ayers, given “his past conduct and the 

conduct relating to this offense and considerations of an even 

higher sentence” had he not reached the plea agreement. J.A. 

129. 

Ultimately, while the District Court mentioned a 

presumption in favor of consecutive sentences, it also 

acknowledged that it had complete discretion to impose 

concurrent sentences should it choose to do so, and it clearly 

stated that the reasons that persuaded the court not to impose 

fully or partially concurrent sentences in this case had nothing 

to do with the erroneous presumption. We have held that a 

district court can, in its discretion, properly decide not to 

impose concurrent sentences if doing so would 

inappropriately make the later offense “penalty-free,” United 

States v. Heard, 359 F.3d 544, 552 (D.C. Cir. 2004), and the 

District Court applied similar reasoning here. Under these 

circumstances, the record conclusively demonstrates that the 

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District Court would have made the same sentencing decision 

even had it properly understood § 3584(a); its 

misinterpretation of that provision was therefore harmless and 

no remand is necessary.

2

 See United States v. Godines, 433 

F.3d 68, 70 (D.C. Cir. 2006) (“[T]he District Court’s 

alternative rationale rendered harmless its [improper] 

mandatory application of the Sentencing Guidelines.”); see 

also Williams, 503 U.S. at 203 (“[E]rror was harmless . . . [if] 

the error did not affect the district court’s selection of the 

sentence imposed.”). If we had any doubt as to whether the 

erroneous understanding the District Court expressed about 

§ 3584(a) affected the District Court’s sentencing decision, 

we would not hold the error to be harmless. The District 

Court’s detailed and legally sound justifications of the 

sentence here, however, satisfy us that the District Court 

would re-impose the same sentence on remand.

D.

Ayers further contends that the District Court improperly 

determined that the parties either addressed or should have 

addressed the issue of whether the federal sentence would run 

consecutive to or concurrent with the Superior Court 

sentence, and that the District Court failed to properly 

understand the scope of its discretion as allowing the 

consideration of the crack/powder disparity in making the 

concurrent versus consecutive determination. The record 

abundantly refutes the first contention. While the District 

Court suggested that “all of this seems . . . to be something 

 2 Because we conclude that any error was harmless, we need not 

consider the Government’s argument that Ayers failed to preserve

for appeal the argument that § 3584(a) does not contain a 

presumption in favor of consecutive sentences and that the District 

Court’s interpretation of the statute should be reviewed only for 

plain error.

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that should have been discussed in entering into the plea and 

deciding . . . the appropriate sentence,” J.A. 106, as shown 

above, the District Court made clear on multiple occasions 

that it understood that it had discretion to make the concurrent 

versus consecutive determination. 

As to the second contention, while it is well settled that 

mitigating the disparity between the Guidelines range for 

crack and powder cocaine is a relevant sentencing 

consideration under § 3553(a), see Kimbrough v. United 

States, 552 U.S. 85, 110 (2007); United States v. Pickett, 475 

F.3d 1347, 1354-56 (D.C. Cir. 2007), the record amply 

demonstrates that the District Court was well aware of that

factor; indeed, the District Court repeatedly mentioned the 

need to consider adjusting for the disparity in the Guidelines 

between crack and powder cocaine while determining an 

appropriate sentence. See J.A. 95, 101, 106-07, 110, 127-28. 

The record also shows that District Court was mindful of its 

obligation, pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(6), to avoid 

unwarranted sentencing disparities among similarly situated 

defendants. J.A. 99-100. The District Court was concerned 

that the fact that Ayers could not point to any instances in 

which a sentencing court used concurrent sentences to 

mitigate the crack/powder differences raised the specter of 

creating such an unwarranted disparity, since concurrent 

sentences “d[id] not appear . . . to be a common way to 

address that issue.” J.A. 127-28. The potential for creating 

unwarranted disparity among similarly situated defendants 

was highlighted because Ayers’s brother, who was convicted 

as a codefendant in the Superior Court case and who also had 

been sentenced for a separate federal crack possession 

offense, received a federal sentence that was fully consecutive

with his Superior Court sentence. J.A. 117. All in all, the 

record shows that the District Court did not improperly limit 

its discretion by concluding that it could not consider the 

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crack/powder disparity; it instead decided that it would not

address the crack/powder disparity through concurrent 

sentencing. This decision was well within the “wide 

discretion” afforded to the district courts in assigning 

sentences. Paroline v. United States, 134 S. Ct. 1710, 1729 

(2014). While there may be circumstances in which it would 

be an abuse of discretion for a district court judge to refuse to

make a federal sentence fully or partially concurrent to 

account for the crack/powder disparity, Ayers has not shown 

that it was necessary to do so here.

III.

The District Court considered the appropriate factors in 

determining whether Ayers’s federal sentence should run 

concurrent with or consecutive to his previously imposed 

Superior Court sentence. Although the District Court erred by 

interpreting 18 U.S.C. § 3584(a) as establishing a 

presumption in favor of consecutive sentences, this error was 

harmless, as the District Court recognized that it had the 

discretion to impose either a consecutive or concurrent 

sentence and concluded that a consecutive sentence was 

warranted based on factors independent of the supposed 

statutory presumption. We therefore affirm the District 

Court’s sentencing order.

So ordered.

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