# United States Court of Appeals
**For the Eighth Circuit**

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No. 15-1064

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United States of America

lllllllllllllllllllll Plaintiff - Appellee

v.

Kelvin Maximillion Stanford

lllllllllllllllllllll Defendant - Appellant

____________ Appeal from United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa - Cedar Rapids

____________ Submitted: March 14, 2016 Filed: May 19, 2016 [Unpublished]

____________ Before MURPHY, BEAM, and GRUENDER, Circuit Judges.

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PER CURIAM.

Kelvin Stanford appeal s from the district court’s 1 decision revoking his supervised release and imposing a sentence of 18 months’ imprisonment and three

1 The Honorable Linda R. Reade, Chief J udge, United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa.years’ supervised release. He contends that the pr ison sentence was unreasonable. We
affirm.

In July 2012, Stanford pleaded guilty to knowing possession with intent to
distribute marijuana, see 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), and knowing possession of a firearm by an unlawful user of a controlled substance, see 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3). The district

c ourt sentenced him to 24 months’ imprisonment followed by a three-year term of supervised release. Less than three months after hi s release from prison, Stanford was stopped by the highway patrol while he was dri ving in Utah. Because Stanford’s
vehicle smelled of marijuana, the officer conducted a search. The officer found over
eleven pounds of marijuana divided into twenty-two eight-ounce packages inside
Stanford’s trunk. The officer took Stanford into custody, and Stanford was charged
with possession of a controlled substance, possession of dr ug paraphernalia, and
failure to signal a lane change. Shortly thereafter, the probation office petitioned the district court to revoke Stanford’s superv ised release. The petition described the
incident and noted that Stanford did not have permission to travel outside of the judicial district in which he was being supervised.

At the revocation hearing, Stanford ad mitted to the violations related to the
Utah incident. The statutory maximum sentence was two years’ imprisonment. S ee 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3). Stanford’s advisory guidelines range was 4-10 months’ imprisonment. The Government argued that the court should vary upward to impose

a sentence of 18 months’ imprisonment. In support of this position, the Government explained that Stanford’s conduct in Utah was very similar to the conduct that led to
his initial conviction and that a longer sentence was necessary to “teach the defendant [the] lesson that he failed to learn” during his first term of impriso nment. Stanford,
in turn, contended that the court should impose a prison sentence within the advisory guidelines range. He argued that his offe nse was nonviolen t, he accepted responsibility for his actions, he was taking classes, and he complied with drug testing during his first three months of supervised release. The court sentenced Stanford to

-2-18 months’ imprisonment followed by three years of supervised release, noting that
the prison term would be consecutive to any punishment imposed for the offense in
Utah. The court chose this sentence because St anford “violated the trust of th[e] Court by, within about 3 months of his releas e from imprisonment, committing almost an
identical crime” to the crime underlying his initial conviction. The court also noted
that Stanford “ch[ose] to go right back into crimin al activity” despite having an employment record and skills.

On appeal, Stanford argues that the 18-month prison sentence imposed by the
district court was unreasonable. We review a district court’s revocation sentencing
decision using the same standards we apply to initial sentencing decisions. United
States v. Cotton

, 399 F.3d 913, 916 (8th Cir. 2005). We thus review for abuse of
discretion. U nited States v. Feemster

, 572 F.3d 455, 461 (8th Cir. 2009) (en banc).
In conducting this review, we search first for procedural errors, suc h as “failing to
calculate (or improperly calculating) the Guidelines range, treating the Guidelines as

m andatory, failing to consider the § 3553(a) factors, selecting a sentence based on clearly erroneous facts, or failing to adequately explain the chosen sentence—including an explanation for any deviation from the Guidelines range.” I d. (quoting Gall v. United States

, 552 U.S. 38, 51 (2007)); United States v. Miller

, 557
F.3d 910, 916 (8th Cir. 2009). In the absence of procedur al error, our court considers
the substan tive reasonableness of the sentence. F eemster , 572 F.3d at 461. In this review, we “take into account the totality of the circumstances, incl uding the extent
of any variance from the Guidelines range.” Id. (quotin g Gall , 552 U.S. at 51). “A

sentence is substantively unreasonable ‘if the district court fails to consider a relevant
factor that should have received significant weight, gives significant weight to an improper or irrelevant factor, or considers only the appropriate factors but commits

a clear error of judgment in weighing those factors.’” U nited States v. Boelter , 806
F.3d 1134, 1136 (8th Cir. 2015) (per curiam) (quoting United States v. Lozoya , 623 F.3d 624, 626 (8th Cir. 2010)).

-3-Stanford does not raise any allegation of procedural e rror. Instead, he contends that the prison sentence was substantivel y unreasonable because the court committed a clear error of judgment when weighing the § 3553(a) factors. According to Stanford, the court did not consider ade quately (1) his record of good conduct in prison and during the first three months of supervised release, (2) the possibility that he would face punishment in Utah as a consequence of his offense, and (3) alternatives to imprisonment, such as a residential reentry center, that would be more effective in deterring Stanford from re sorting to criminal conduct in the future. The district court explained at sentencing th at it considered the statutory factors and the various sentencing options that it could impose. See United States v. Townsend

, 617 F.3d 991, 994 (8th Cir. 2010) (per curiam ) (“Although a district court is required to consider each of the § 3553(a) factors in determining the proper sentence to impose, it need not ‘categorically rehearse each of the [§] 3553(a) factors on the record when it imposes a sentence as long as it is clear that they were considered.’” (quoting United
States v. Dieken , 432 F.3d 906, 909 (8th Cir. 2006) (a lteration in original))). While our court may not apply a presumption of reasonableness when a sentence falls outside the guidelines range, we “must give due deference to the district court’s decision that the § 3553(a) factors, on a whol e, justify the extent of the variance.”
Feemster , 572 F.3d at 461-62 (quoting Gall , 552 U.S. at 51). “[I]t will be the unusual
case when we reverse a district court se ntence—whether within, above, or below the applicable Guidelines range—a s substantively unreasonable.” Id. at 464 (quoting
United States v. Gardellini , 545 F.3d 1089, 1090 (D.C. Cir. 2008)).

Applying the deference due under Feemster , we conclude that the court did not commit a clear error of judgment when wei ghing the relevant factors. The district
court sentenced Stanford to 18 months’ im prisonment, stating that a lower sentence was not appropriate because Stanford had “v iolated the trust” of the court by, within only three months of his release from prison, committing an offense that was very similar to the offense underlying his initial conviction. The court further noted that Stanford chose to “go right back into crim inal activity” despite having other skills that

-4-would allow him to support himself. Under 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e), factors such as deterrence and the need to protect the pub lic from further crimes of the defendant must guide the district court’s revocation sentencing decision. See 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e) (citing 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(2)(B), (C)). We afford the district court wide
latitude to consider these a nd other relevant factors and to assign some factors greater weight than others. United States v. Deering , 762 F.3d 783, 787 (8th Cir. 2014). A
district court does not abuse its discretion “[s]im ply because [it] we igh[s] the relevant factors more heavily than [the defendant] would prefer.” United States v. Richart , 662 F.3d 1037, 1054 (8th Cir. 2011). Based on the r ecord, we conclude that the court did
not abuse its discretion when it weighed the stated factors more heavily than the mitigating factors cited by Stanford.

We also reject Stanford’s contention that the 18-month prison sentence was substantively unreasonable because the court determined that it would run consecutively to any sentence imposed as a result of the charges in Utah. “The decision to impose a consecutive or concurrent sentence upon revocation of supervised release is committed to the s ound discretion of the district court.” United
States v. Cotroneo , 89 F.3d 510, 512 (8th Cir. 1996). Here, Stanford’s recidivism supported the court’s decision. See United States v. Kreitinger , 576 F.3d 500, 504-05 (8th Cir. 2009) (finding reasonable consecu tive sentences for revocation and new crimes committed while on supe rvised release because the defendant had “recidivist tendencies”). We s ee no abuse of discretion. For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the sentence imposed by the district court was not unreasonabl e, and we affirm.

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