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19-757-cr

United States v. Owens

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

SUMMARY ORDER

RULINGS BY SUMMARY ORDER DO NOT HAVE PRECEDENTIAL EFFECT. CITATION TO A 

SUMMARY ORDER FILED ON OR AFTER JANUARY 1, 2007, IS PERMITTED AND IS GOVERNED BY 

FEDERAL RULE OF APPELLATE PROCEDURE 32.1 AND THIS COURT=S LOCAL RULE 32.1.1. WHEN 

CITING A SUMMARY ORDER IN A DOCUMENT FILED WITH THIS COURT, A PARTY MUST CITE 

EITHER THE FEDERAL APPENDIX OR AN ELECTRONIC DATABASE (WITH THE NOTATION 

“SUMMARY ORDER”). A PARTY CITING TO A SUMMARY ORDER MUST SERVE A COPY OF IT ON 

ANY PARTY NOT REPRESENTED BY COUNSEL. 

At a stated term of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, held at 

the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, 40 Foley Square, in the City of New York, 

on the 2nd day of December, two thousand twenty.

Present:

JOHN M. WALKER, JR.,

ROBERT A. KATZMANN,

JOSEPH F. BIANCO,

Circuit Judges.

_____________________________________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

 Appellee,

v. No. 19-757-cr

SEVEN L. OWENS,

Defendant-Appellant.

_____________________________________

For Appellee: Anthony E. Kaplan, Marc H. Silverman, 

Assistant United States Attorneys, for John 

H. Durham, United States Attorney for the 

District of Connecticut, New Haven, CT.

For Defendant-Appellant: Paul F. Thomas, Duffy Law, LLC, New 

Haven, CT.
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Appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the District of 

Connecticut (Hall, J.).

UPON DUE CONSIDERATION, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND 

DECREED that the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.

Defendant-Appellant Seven L. Owens appeals from a judgment entered March 22, 2019 

by the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut (Hall, J.) sentencing Owens to 

25 years’ imprisonment, the statutory maximum, following his guilty plea to one count of 

carjacking in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2119(2). We assume the parties’ familiarity with the 

underlying facts, the procedural history of the case, and the issues on appeal.

Owens’s sole contention on appeal is that it was substantively unreasonable for the 

district court to impose the maximum legal sentence and that he should have been sentenced

within the Sentencing Guidelines range of 151 to 188 months. “A sentence is substantively 

unreasonable if it cannot be located within the range of permissible decisions.” United States v. 

Jenkins, 854 F.3d 181, 187 (2d Cir. 2017). “Our review for substantive unreasonableness is 

particularly deferential,” and “[w]e will identify as substantively unreasonable only those 

sentences that are so shockingly high, shockingly low, or otherwise unsupportable as a matter of 

law that allowing them to stand would damage the administration of justice.” United States v. 

Singh, 877 F.3d 107, 115 (2d Cir. 2017).1

We cannot conclude that imposition of the maximum sentence, although well above the 

applicable Guidelines range, was an abuse of the district court’s considerable discretion. In 

pleading guilty, Owens admitted to abducting a woman, threatening to shoot her, and repeatedly 

1 Unless otherwise indicated, case quotations omit all internal quotation marks, 

footnotes, alterations, and citations.
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raping her in the presence of her infant child. The district court reasonably concluded that a long 

sentence would be necessary “to reflect the seriousness of the offense.” 18 U.S.C. 

§ 3553(a)(2)(A). The district court also considered Owens’s significant history of prior 

convictions and disciplinary infractions. Finally, the court acknowledged certain mitigating 

factors, including Owens’s difficult childhood and his substance abuse problems. Nonetheless, 

the court concluded that a sentence within the Guidelines range would not adequately reflect the 

gravity of Owens’s offense. These factors provide adequate justification for the district court’s 

sentence.

Owens argues that the district court gave insufficient weight to the fact that he is subject 

to a concurrent 45-year state court sentence based on convictions of Connecticut offenses arising 

out of the same conduct that underlies his federal conviction. Because he will be incarcerated 

past the expiration of even the maximum federal sentence that could be imposed, Owens argues 

that an above-Guidelines sentence was “greater than necessary” under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) to 

achieve the goals of sentencing. Owens also argues that it would aid his rehabilitation to serve a 

greater proportion of his total sentence in Connecticut state prison because he could more easily 

receive visits from family members. We do not doubt that a district court ought to consider any 

parallel sentences to which the defendant may be subject for the same conduct in crafting an 

appropriate federal sentence. The district court here fulfilled that obligation, but permissibly 

concluded that the existence of the state sentence was outweighed by the need for the federal 

sentence to reflect the seriousness of Owens’s offense. “The weight to be afforded any 

sentencing factor is a matter firmly committed to the discretion of the sentencing judge and is 

beyond our review, as long as the sentence ultimately imposed is reasonable.” United States v. 

Bleau, 930 F.3d 35, 42 (2d Cir. 2019) (per curiam). Moreover, the fact that Owens’s state 
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sentence is concurrent to any federal sentence means that the length of the sentence imposed here 

will not increase his total term of incarceration. Considering the record as a whole, we cannot say 

that the district court abused its discretion.

Finally, Owens argues that the factors relied upon by the district court in imposing its 

above-Guidelines sentence were already captured by the various enhancements that applied to 

his Guidelines range. The district court acted within its discretion, however, by concluding that 

these enhancements did not fully reflect the gravity of the offense conduct. We have observed 

that “some Guidelines enhancements and reductions apply without modulation to a wide range of 

conduct,” such that “a district court may find that . . . there is a wide variety of culpability 

amongst defendants” even where the same enhancements apply. United States v. Cavera, 550 

F.3d 180, 192 (2d Cir. 2008) (en banc).

For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that Owens’s sentence is not so “shockingly 

high,” Singh, 877 F.3d at 115, as to be substantively unreasonable. Accordingly, the judgment of 

the district court is AFFIRMED.

FOR THE COURT:

Catherine O’Hagan Wolfe, Clerk