United States Court of Appeals 

for the Fifth Circuit 

No. 21-10392 

Summary Calendar 

United States of America, 

Plaintiff—Appellee, 

versus

Andre Bickens, 

Defendant—Appellant. 

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the Northern District of Texas 

USDC No. 4:98-CR-68-1 

Before Higginbotham, Higginson, and Duncan, Circuit Judges.

Per Curiam:*

The district court sentenced Andre Bickens to 270 months’ 

imprisonment following a guilty plea in 1999. In 2021, Bickens filed a motion 

for compassionate release under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A) arguing that he 

had shown extraordinary and compelling reasons for a sentence reduction 

*

 Pursuant to 5th Circuit Rule 47.5, the court has determined that this 

opinion should not be published and is not precedent except under the limited 

circumstances set forth in 5th Circuit Rule 47.5.4. 

United States Court of Appeals 

Fifth Circuit 

FILED 

February 15, 2022 

Lyle W. Cayce 

Clerk 

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No. 21-10392 

2 

based on his medical conditions and based upon a claim that, under U.S.S.G. 

§ 5G1.3(b), his 270-month federal sentence should have been ordered to run 

concurrently with a state parole revocation sentence. The district court 

denied Bickens’s motion for compassionate release, concluding that 

Bickens’s medical condition did not constitute an extraordinary and 

compelling circumstance but failed to address the § 5G1.3 argument.1

 On 

limited remand, the district court explained that Bickens was not entitled 

under § 5G1.3(b) to have his federal sentence run concurrently with his state 

parole revocation sentence, and, thus, he had not shown an extraordinary and 

compelling reason for a sentence reduction. 

We review a district court’s denial of a § 3582(c)(1)(A) motion for 

abuse of discretion. See United States v. Chambliss, 948 F.3d 691, 693 (5th 

Cir. 2020). “A court abuses its discretion if it ‘bases its decision on an error 

of law or a clearly erroneous assessment of the evidence.’” Id. (quoting 

United States v. Chapple, 847 F.3d 227, 229 (5th Cir. 2017)). 

Bickens has not challenged the district court’s determination that his 

medical conditions did not constitute extraordinary and compelling reasons, 

nor does he argue that the district court incorrectly believed it was bound by 

the policy statements issued by the Sentencing Commission. See United 

States v. Shkambi, 993 F.3d 388, 393 (5th Cir. 2021). He has thus abandoned 

those arguments. See Yohey v. Collins, 985 F.2d 222, 224-25 (5th Cir. 1993). 

Moreover, on limited remand, the district court acknowledged it was not 

bound by the policy statements and reached the same conclusion. 

The district court did not abuse its discretion in determining that 

Bickens had not shown an extraordinary and compelling reason for a sentence 

1

 The district court has since reduced Bickens’s 270-month sentence to 228 

months in response to a separate motion under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2). 

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3 

reduction because he was not entitled to have his federal sentence run 

concurrently with his state parole revocation sentence. To the district court, 

Bickens argued that the two sentences should have been ordered to run 

concurrently because the parole revocation sentence was an “undischarged 

term of imprisonment” that “resulted from another offense that is relevant 

conduct to the instant offense of conviction.” U.S.S.G. § 5G1.3(b) (2016). 

However, under the 1998 Sentencing Guidelines, which were used at 

Bickens’s 1999 sentencing, § 5G1.3(b) stated that a sentence should be 

imposed to run concurrently with an undischarged term of imprisonment 

that “resulted from offense(s) that have been fully taken into account in the 

determination of the offense level for the instant offense.” U.S.S.G. § 5G1.3 

(1998). In addition, the applicable Guidelines commentary stated that 

[i]f the defendant was on federal or state probation, parole, or 

supervised release at the time of the instant offense, and has 

had such probation, parole, or supervised release revoked, the 

sentence for the instant offense should be imposed to run 

consecutively to the term imposed for the violation of probation, 

parole, or supervised release in order to provide an incremental 

penalty for the violation of probation, parole, or supervised 

release. 

Id. cmt. 6 (emphasis added). Neither the parole revocation nor the conduct 

that gave rise to the parole revocation was “taken into account in the 

determination of” Bickens’s offense level, and the state sentence he argues 

should have run concurrently was “imposed for the violation of . . . parole.” 

U.S.S.G. § 5G1.3(b) & cmt. 6 (1998). Because Bickens was not entitled to a 

concurrent sentence, the decision not to run his federal sentence 

concurrently with his state parole revocation sentence does not constitute an 

extraordinary and compelling reason for a sentence reduction. 

 Accordingly, the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED. 

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