Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca3-09-03578/USCOURTS-ca3-09-03578-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Henry Rome
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

Honorable Stewart Dalzell, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of *

Pennsylvania, sitting by designation.

1

 NOT PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

_____________

No. 09-3578

_____________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

v.

HENRY ROME,

 Appellant.

_____________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of New Jersey

(Crim. No. 01-819)

District Judge: Honorable Susan D. Wigenton

_____________

Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a)

May 14, 2010

Before: BARRY and ROTH, Circuit Judges, and 

DALZELL , District Judge *

(Opinion filed June 21, 2010)

_____________

OPINION

_____________

Case: 09-3578 Document: 003110188726 Page: 1 Date Filed: 06/21/2010
 It appears that this defendant's last name is actually "Roman," but the caption of the case 1

-- and every official document in it -- lists him as "Rome."

2

DALZELL, District Judge.

Appellant Henry Rome appeals the district court’s sanction for his violation of a 1

condition of his supervised release. Rome argues that the district court committed

procedural errors by sentencing him above the statutory maximum and failing to consider

alternative types of sentences for his violation. He also contends that the sanction was

overly punitive and unreasonable. For the following reasons, we will affirm.

I. FACTS AND PROCEDURAL POSTURE

Henry Rome was sentenced for the underlying offense, felon in possession of a

firearm, on May 21, 2003. Judge William G. Bassler imposed a sentence of fifty-two

months of imprisonment, three years of supervised release, and a special assessment of

$100. (Joint Appendix, United States v. Henry Rome, No. 09-3578 (filed Jan. 27, 2010)

("J.A.") at 7, 21-22.) 

On May 19, 2006, while on supervised release, Rome submitted for drug testing a

urine sample from someone else. He then submitted a second sample on the same day,

which tested positive for marijuana. On June 21, 2006, he admitted to two violations of

his supervised release: unlawful substance use and failure to answer inquiries or follow

instructions. (Id. at 16.) Judge Bassler did not revoke Rome's supervised release for these

violations, but he imposed a special condition that obliged Rome to spend six months in a

community corrections center, halfway house, or similar residential facility. (Id. at 17.) 

Case: 09-3578 Document: 003110188726 Page: 2 Date Filed: 06/21/2010
 At the June 18 hearing, Rome admitted that he sold "crack cocaine." (J.A. 29.) 2

3

Judge Bassler retired, and this case was then reassigned to Judge Susan D.

Wigenton. After Rome left the community corrections center, on April 18, 2007 he was

arrested by the Atlantic City Police Department and charged with various drug offenses

related to cocaine. On July 11, 2008, he pled guilty in New Jersey state court to

possession of cocaine with intent to distribute within 500 feet of a public housing facility.

(Id. at 28.) In state court, he was sentenced to five years of imprisonment for that offense.

(Id.)

Rome appeared before Judge Wigenton on June 18, 2009, and he conceded that he

violated the terms of his supervised release by committing another crime, the cocaine sale

in Atlantic City. (Id.) There is no dispute that pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3) the 2

statutory maximum for this violation is twenty-four months, and Rome's advisory

Guideline range was twenty-four to thirty months. At this hearing, Rome's attorney asked

Judge Wigenton to make the sentence for the supervised release violation run

concurrently with Rome's five-year sentence in state court. He also argued that the

statutory maximum should be eighteen months, rather than twenty-four months, because

Rome had spent six months in a community corrections facility for the previous

supervised release violation pursuant to Judge Bassler's 2006 order. 

Judge Wigenton imposed a sanction of twenty-four months of imprisonment, to

run consecutively to Rome's state-court sentence. (Id. at 3-4, 39.) Rome then filed a

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timely notice of appeal.

II. JURISDICTION AND STANDARD OF REVIEW

We have jurisdiction over this appeal under 18 U.S.C. § 3742(a). To review

Rome's sentence, we "first ensure that the district court committed no significant

procedural error," and if there is no such error we "then consider the substantive

reasonableness of the sentence imposed under an abuse-of-discretion standard." Gall v.

United States, 552 U.S. 38, 51 (2007). See also United States v. Tomko, 562 F.3d 558,

567 (3d Cir. 2009) (en banc). The fact that the sentence was a sanction for a violation of a

condition of supervised release does not, as a general proposition, change this regimen.

United States v. Bungar, 478 F.3d 540, 542 (3d Cir. 2007). 

III. ANALYSIS

In Rome's appeal of Judge Wigenton's sentence, he raises three questions: (1)

whether the sentence exceeded the statutory maximum because Rome had previously

spent six months in a community corrections facility, (2) whether the district court failed

to consider the types of sentences available, as 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) may require, and (3)

whether the sentence was overly punitive and unreasonable. Under the Gall rubric, the

first two issues are "procedural" and we should analyze them before addressing the

reasonableness of the sanction Judge Wigenton imposed.

A. Statutory Maximum

Pursuant to the current version of 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3), which is the section that

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applies to Rome's cocaine sale violation, "a defendant whose term is revoked under this

paragraph may not be required to serve on any such revocation . . . more than 2 years in

prison if such offense [the underlying offense of felon in possession] is a class C or D

felony." As the Government explains, the phrase "on any such revocation" was added by

an amendment that became effective on April 30, 2003. See PROTECT Act, Pub. L. No.

108-21 § 101(1), 117 Stat. 650, 651 (2003). Some courts had apparently held that the time

limits in § 3583(e)(3) applied to the sum total of all violations, rather than to each

violation. See, e.g., United States v. Lewis, 519 F.3d 822, 824 (8th Cir. 2008). The

amendment clarified that the maximum sentence applied to each violation. But because

Rome committed the underlying offense (felon in possession) before April 30, 2003, there

are potential ex post facto issues if we reject Rome's argument based on the fact that the

two-year maximum applies to each violation. The Government makes another argument,

however, that is equally compelling. 

Even if we assume that we should aggregate all of Rome's periods of

imprisonment for his violations of supervised release, Judge Wigenton's sanction remains

within the bounds of § 3583(e)(3). Rome contends that the six months that he spent at a

community corrections facility for the prior supervised release violation should count

against the statutory maximum because those six months "represented a period of

confinement akin to imprisonment." Rome Br. at 7. He argues that the maximum sentence

that the district judge could impose for the cocaine sale violation was therefore eighteen

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months. Rome concedes that he "is aware that most federal appellate case law, including

the case law in this circuit, holds that community corrections centers are not equivalent to

prison," but "he raises his specific circumstances for this Court's consideration and to

preserve the issue on appeal." Id. at 7-8 (citing United States v. Serafini, 233 F.3d 758,

777 (3d Cir. 2000)). 

In Serafini, a jury convicted the defendant of perjury and the district court

sentenced him to a split sentence of five months of imprisonment and five months of

house arrest as a condition of supervised release. 233 F.3d at 762 & n.2. The district court

recommended that the Bureau of Prisons designate the Catholic Social Services of

Lackawanna County Residential Program as the location for the imprisonment portion of

this sentence. Id. at n.2. On appeal, the Government contended that it was improper for

the judge to recommend that Serafini serve his sentence at that facility because it is not a

place of "imprisonment." Id. at 763. The Government argued that U.S.S.G. § 5C1.1

required that Serafini serve at least half of the minimum term in imprisonment and that

the judge erred by recommending that Serafini serve that portion of the sentence at the

community confinement center. Id. at 777. 

We agreed in Serafini that the district judge would have violated the Guidelines if

he had actually imposed a sentence of community confinement for the imprisonment

portion of Serafini's sentence. We explained that under § 5C1.1, "'community

confinement' cannot constitute 'imprisonment' for purposes of fulfilling the requirement

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that one-half of a split sentence be satisfied by imprisonment." Id. But because the district

judge made only a recommendation that Serafini serve the prison portion of his sentence

at the community confinement center, we concluded that this recommendation was

"erroneous" but "technically not reviewable." Id. at 778. In dicta we explained that the

judge's sentence, if imposed, would have been unlawful. Id. 

Thus, although Serafini does not speak directly to the issue at hand -- that is,

whether time spent in community confinement counts against the statutory maximum

under § 3583(e)(3) -- other decisions persuade us that it should not.

For example, in Reno v. Koray, the Supreme Court held that a defendant is not

entitled under 18 U.S.C. § 3585(b) to credit against his sentence for time that he spent in

pretrial release at a community treatment center because a community treatment center is

not "official detention," as § 3585(b) requires. 515 U.S. 50, 56 (1995). The Supreme

Court overturned our decision in the case, Koray v. Sizer, 21 F.3d 558, 567 (3d Cir. 1994)

("we conclude that 'official detention' for purposes of credit under 18 U.S.C. § 3585

includes time spent under conditions of jail-type confinement"). In reversing that

decision, the Supreme Court stated, among other concerns, that determining whether each

defendant had been in "'jail-type confinement' would require a fact-intensive inquiry into

the circumstances of confinement, an inquiry based on information in the hands of private

entities not available to the Bureau as a matter of right." Koray, 515 U.S. at 64. Rome

asks us to examine his personal situation and the specific facts of his time in community

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confinement, but the Government aptly argues that he thus offers a prime example of the

Supreme Court's concern in Koray.

In United States v. Cintron-Fernandez, the applicable Guidelines provided that for

the defendant to satisfy the minimum ten-month term of his sentence, the sentencing

judge had to impose at least five months of imprisonment, but the other five months could

be spent in community confinement or home detention. 356 F.3d 340, 347 (1st Cir. 2004)

(discussing U.S.S.G. § 5C1.1(d)). But the district judge sentenced the defendant to five

months of home detention and three years of supervised release, with five more months of

home detention as a condition. Id. The First Circuit held that "Cintron-Fernandez's

sentence must include at least five months of imprisonment in order to satisfy the

minimum term" but that the sentence imposed "provides for ten months of home

detention with no 'imprisonment' at all." Id. The court reversed and remanded the case for

resentencing. See also United States v. Horek, 137 F.3d 1226, 1229 (10th Cir. 1998)

("Although the Guidelines permit community confinement to be 'substituted' for

imprisonment, it does not necessarily follow that the four months Horek spent in

community confinement constituted 'imprisonment' under the Guidelines."); United States

v. Iversen, 90 F.3d 1340, 1343 (8th Cir. 1996) (distinguishing between home detention

and imprisonment and holding that a sentencing judge did not improperly impose

"imprisonment" when the judge required some home detention as a condition of a

sentence of probation).

Case: 09-3578 Document: 003110188726 Page: 8 Date Filed: 06/21/2010
 It is a nice question whether such an argument is embraced within the general teaching 3

of Bungar, as that decision itself recognizes in its contrast of § 3553(a)(3) with § 3583(e), which

conspicuously omits "the kinds of sentences available." See Bungar, 478 F.3d at 543 n.2. We

nevertheless noted the Second Circuit's observation that "this omission does not foreclose a court

from considering 'other pertinent factors.'" Id. (quoting United States v. Williams, 443 F.3d 35,

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Rome also contends that U.S.S.G. §§ 5C1.1(c) and (d) support his position because

they provide that in some cases a "sentence of imprisonment" may be satisfied by a

combination of imprisonment and community confinement or home detention. These

sections state that some community confinement or home detention may be

"substitute[d]" for some imprisonment. Rome argues that this demonstrates that

imprisonment is the same as community confinement or home detention.

But a better reading of these sections is that they confirm that community

confinement and imprisonment are distinct from each other. Just because community

confinement may be a total or partial "substitute" for imprisonment under these sections

does not mean that community confinement is the same thing as imprisonment. Tellingly,

§§ 5C1.1(c)(2) and (d)(2) also suggest that community confinement and prison are

different because they do not permit a complete substitution of community confinement

for the prison sentence. 

Imprisonment is a sentencing sanction distinct from community confinement. For

all of these reasons, we reject Rome's first procedural argument.

B. Kinds of Sentences Available

Rome next contends that Judge Wigenton failed to consider "the kinds of

sentences available," which is factor (3) of 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). At the sentencing 3

Case: 09-3578 Document: 003110188726 Page: 9 Date Filed: 06/21/2010
47-48 (2d Cir. 2006)). 

10

hearing, Rome requested a split sentence -- a combination of incarceration, a halfway

house, and house arrest. He also asked that his sentence be imposed concurrently with his

state court sentence. 

On appeal, Rome contends that Judge Wigenton did not properly consider these

requests and that the "district court focused exclusively on the need to send a message to

the community." Rome Br. at 10. In support of this argument, Rome puzzlingly quotes

Judge Wigenton's statement that "'from the Court's perspective, there's a need to deter not

only the community, but there's a need to deter you.'" Id. This statement shows the

opposite of Rome's argument -- that Judge Wigenton considered not only general

deterrence but also specific deterrence of Rome himself.

From the transcript of the hearing it appears that Judge Wigenton listened to

defense counsel's arguments on these points and made sure she understood the

defendant's proposal regarding the split sentence. (See J.A. 34.) Just because Judge

Wigenton did not adopt Rome's positions, or specifically articulate her rejection of them,

does not mean that she failed to consider alternatives to incarceration. See Rita v. United

States, 551 U.S. 338, 358-59 (2007) ("Where a matter is as conceptually simple as in the

case at hand and the record makes clear that the sentencing judge considered the evidence

and arguments [e.g., by listening to the argument, considering the evidence, and being

"fully aware" of the defendant's issues] we do not believe the law requires the judge to

Case: 09-3578 Document: 003110188726 Page: 10 Date Filed: 06/21/2010
11

write more extensively."). Judge Wigenton noted, moreover, that Judge Bassler had been

lenient in continuing Rome's supervised release for the earlier supervised release

violation, but that Rome had nonetheless rebuffed the probation office's attempts to help

him and had been a repeat violator. (J.A. 37.) This is further evidence that Judge

Wigenton indeed considered Rome's request for a different kind of sentence but rejected

it.

For these reasons, we deny Rome's appeal on this point, as well.

C. Reasonableness

There being no flaws with the two procedural issues that Rome raises on appeal,

we now turn to his argument that the twenty-four-month revocation sentence is "overly

punitive." Rome Br. at 10. Rome contends that Judge Wigenton's sentence is more than

necessary to achieve the sentencing goals, especially as he will spend a total of seven

years in prison for "what amounts to a relatively small drug possession." Id. at 11. 

As the Supreme Court made clear in Gall, we review the reasonableness of Judge

Wigenton's sentence, which was within the Guidelines range, under an abuse-ofdiscretion standard. See also Tomko, 562 F.3d at 568 ("In other words, if the district

court's sentence is procedurally sound, we will affirm it unless no reasonable sentencing

court would have imposed the same sentence on that particular defendant for the reasons

the district court provided."). Rome has the burden of proving that the sentence was

unreasonable. United States v. Lessner, 498 F.3d 185, 204 (3d Cir. 2007). 

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At the violation hearing, Judge Wigenton expressed concern about Rome's relative

youth, his repeat offenses, his continued failure to comply with the conditions of his

supervised release, and the break he got from Judge Bassler on the previous drug

violation. She also mentioned general deterrence and "the message that [she] send[s] to

the community." (J.A. 38.) She did not say anything to suggest that she was sentencing

him for improper reasons, and Rome has not pointed to anything in the record to the

contrary.

Rome's only argument is that seven years in jail is somehow too long for what he

sees as low-level drug offenses. But that contention does not begin to show that Judge

Wigenton's sentence was an abuse of discretion, especially after Tomko.

IV. CONCLUSION

As Rome has raised no meritorious legal issue on appeal, we affirm the sanction

Judge Wigenton imposed.

Case: 09-3578 Document: 003110188726 Page: 12 Date Filed: 06/21/2010