United States Court of Appeals

For the Eighth Circuit

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No. 20-1575

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United States of America

lllllllllllllllllllllPlaintiff - Appellee

v.

Sidney Glennard Hines

lllllllllllllllllllllDefendant - Appellant

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Appeal from United States District Court 

for the Southern District of Iowa - Eastern

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Submitted: January 11, 2021

Filed: June 1, 2021 

[Unpublished]

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Before LOKEN, GRASZ, and KOBES, Circuit Judges. 

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PER CURIAM.

In 2009, a jury convicted Sidney Hines of five crack cocaine-related offenses

in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 846, 841(a)(1), 841(b)(1)(A)-(C), 856. The district court

determined that his advisory guidelines sentencing range was 292-365 months and

sentenced Hines to 300 months imprisonment. Hines appealed, and we affirmed. 

United States v. Hines, 395 Fed. App’x 316 (8th Cir. 2010), cert. denied, 563 U.S.
982 (2011). In 2014, Hines moved for a reduced sentence under USSG Amendment

782. This Amendment, designed to reduce the disparity between crack and powder

cocaine penalties under the Guidelines, reduced Hines’s guidelines range to 235-293

months, with the bottom of the range “restricted” by the 240-month mandatory

minimum sentence. See USSG § 5G1.1(c)(2) and comment. The district court

reduced his sentence to 247 months.

 

In 2020, Hines moved for a sentence reduction under Section 404 of the First

Step Act. Pub. L. No. 115-391, 132 Stat. 5194, 5222 (2018). After briefing, the

district court1 determined that Hines was eligible for First Step Act relief, reduced his

term of supervised release by two years, but exercised its discretion and declined to

reduce the imprisonment sentence because, “if the purpose of the First Step Act is to

give retroactive application to the Fair Sentencing Act, the defendant has received

that benefit together with the benefit of Guideline Amendment 782.” Hines appeals. 

Reviewing the decision to grant or deny an authorized sentence reduction for abuse

of discretion, we affirm. See United States v. McDonald, 944 F.3d 769, 771 (8th Cir.

2019) (standard of review). 

On appeal, Hines advances several arguments our recent decisions have

rejected. The district court did not err by misapprehending its broad First Step Act

discretion or by failing to affirmatively analyze the 18 U.S.C. § 3553 sentencing

factors. See United States v. Holder, 981 F.3d 647, 649-50 (8th Cir. 2020). The court

was not required to make an affirmative statement acknowledging its discretion,

United States v. Booker, 974 F.3d 869, 871 (8th Cir. 2020), nor to “respond to every

argument made by defendant or recite each section 3553 factor.” United States v.

Williams, 943 F.3d 841, 844 (8th Cir. 2019). The court needed only to “set forth

enough to satisfy the appellate court that [it] has considered the parties’ arguments

1The Honorable John A. Jarvey, Chief Judge, United States District Court for

the Southern District of Iowa. 

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and has a reasoned basis for exercising [its] own legal decisionmaking authority.” 

Booker, 974 F.3d at 871, quoting Rita v. United States, 551 U.S. 338, 356 (2007). 

Hines further argues that the district court committed two procedural errors. 

First, he argues the court “fail[ed] to ensure that Mr. Hines’s present-day guideline

calculation was correct” by taking into account the Sentencing Commission’s

elimination of “recency” points in USSG Amendment 742, which would lower his

Amendment 782 amended range from 235-293 months to 210-262 months. This

contention is without merit. Reducing the amended guidelines range under

Amendment 742 would not have affected the extent of the district court’s discretion

under the First Step Act because the court expressly recognized that the Fair

Sentencing Act reduced Hines’s mandatory minimum sentence to 10 years (120

months). More important, Amendment 742 is not retroactive. See United States v.

Johnson, 703 F.3d 464, 466 (8th Cir. 2013). Thus, it would not have applied “if

sections 2 and 3 of the Fair Sentencing Act . . . were in effect at the time the covered

offense was committed” in 2009. First Step Act § 404(b).

Second, Hines argues the district court erred in concluding he received the full

benefit of Amendment 782 because the revised guidelines range under Amendment

782 was 235-293 but was “increased from 235 at the bottom of the range to 240, due

to the § 841(b)(1)(A) mandatory minimum.” There was no error, procedural or

otherwise. Section 5G1.1(c)(2) expressly provides that the mandatory minimum is

the bottom of the range. Of course, the district court had First Step Act discretion to

increase the proportional benefit it had granted under Amendment 782 in 2014. But

it was not obligated to do so, nor was it obligated to begin its First Step Act analysis

with an artificial recalculation of its prior Amendment 782 range.

The district court made no procedural error in determining the amended

guidelines range under the Fair Sentencing Act, and its statement that the prior

reduction under Amendment 782 achieved the purposes of the First Step Act provided

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the appellate court “a reasoned basis for exercising his own legal decisionmaking

authority.” Booker, 974 F.3d at 871, quoting Rita, 551 U.S. at 356.

The Order of the district court dated March 6, 2020 is affirmed. 

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