United States Court of Appeals

For the Eighth Circuit 

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No. 23-2290

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United States of America

 Plaintiff - Appellee

v.

Anthony Terrell Jones

 Defendant - Appellant

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Appeal from United States District Court 

for the Western District of Missouri - Jefferson City

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Submitted: November 17, 2023

Filed: February 8, 2024

[Unpublished]

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Before COLLOTON, BENTON, and SHEPHERD, Circuit Judges. 

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PER CURIAM.

Anthony Jones challenges the substantive reasonableness of the 24-month 

sentence that the district court1 imposed upon revoking his supervised release. 

Having jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm.

1

The Honorable Stephen R. Bough, United States District Judge for the 

Western District of Missouri. 
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I.

Jones pled guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 

U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1) and 924(a)(2). The district court sentenced him to 30 months’ 

imprisonment with 3 years of supervised release to follow. Soon after commencing 

supervised release in 2022, the United States Probation Office issued a report 

alleging that Jones had violated several release conditions by consuming alcohol and 

drugs and removing a sweat patch to evade detection. Less than a week later, the 

Probation Office issued a second report alleging that Jones had violated several more

release conditions by disobeying the directions of his probation officer and failing 

to participate in psychosexual- and alcohol-monitoring evaluations. The report 

further noted that Jones was not amenable to supervision and frequently—often 

combatively—resisted the Probation Office’s directives. Pursuant to the report’s

recommendation, the district court ordered a show-cause hearing. Before the 

hearing, the Probation Office issued three additional reports alleging that Jones had 

violated his release conditions by repeatedly using drugs and failing to participate in 

substance-abuse counseling. 

Jones failed to appear at his show-cause hearing, which constituted another 

violation of a release condition. Jones was apprehended five weeks later at the home 

of a convicted felon, where law enforcement discovered marijuana inside the 

residence and on Jones’s person. The district court subsequently ordered a 

revocation hearing, and the Probation Office issued another report alleging that 

Jones had violated three additional release conditions by living in an unapproved 

residence, interacting with a known felon, and possessing drugs. At his revocation 

hearing, Jones admitted six of the eight alleged violations, which were categorized 

as Grade C. The district court sentenced him to the statutory maximum of 24 

months’ imprisonment, varying upward from the United States Sentencing 

Guidelines range of 8 to 14 months’ imprisonment. 
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II.

Jones appeals, arguing that the district court abused its discretion by imposing 

a substantively unreasonable sentence. “We review the reasonableness of a 

revocation sentence under the same deferential abuse-of-discretion standard that 

applies to initial sentencing proceedings.” United States v. Elbert, 20 F.4th 413, 416 

(8th Cir. 2021). A district court abuses its discretion when it “fails to consider a 

relevant and significant factor, gives significant weight to an irrelevant or improper 

factor, or considers the appropriate factors but commits a clear error of judgment in 

weighing those factors.” United States v. Doerr, 42 F.4th 914, 918 (8th Cir. 2022) 

(citation omitted). 

A. 

Jones first asserts that the district court failed to adequately justify its decision 

to vary upward. In fashioning a revocation sentence, a district court should consider 

the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) sentencing factors incorporated in 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e), 

United States v. Johnson, 827 F.3d 740, 745 (8th Cir. 2016), and “make an 

individualized assessment based on the facts presented,” Gall v. United States, 552 

U.S. 38, 50 (2007). “If [a district court] decides that an outside-Guidelines sentence 

is warranted, [it] must consider the extent of the deviation and ensure that the 

justification is sufficiently compelling to support the degree of the variance.” Id. 

“We afford the court wide latitude to weigh the § 3553(a) factors in each case and 

assign some factors greater weight than others in determining an appropriate 

sentence.” United States v. DeMarrias, 895 F.3d 570, 574 (8th Cir. 2018) (citation 

omitted). In this vein, a district court need not make specific factual findings for 

each factor that it considers. United States v. Miller, 557 F.3d 910, 917 (8th Cir. 

2009). Rather, “[a]ll that is generally required to satisfy the appellate court is 

evidence that the district court was aware of the relevant factors.” Id. (citation 

omitted). 
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Here, the district court conducted an individualized assessment after 

determining the Guidelines range, finding that Jones demonstrated “a pattern of 

noncompliant behavior” and was extremely disrespectful to law enforcement and 

court staff. On one occasion, for example, Jones sent a text message to his probation 

officer requesting to purchase a joint of marijuana from her, which the district court 

opined demonstrated a “flagrant disregard” for the justice system. The district court 

further noted the significant resources that the Probation Office had expended to 

admit Jones to an inpatient rehabilitation program, a decision that proved to be an 

exercise in futility given Jones’s subsequent misconduct. It ultimately found that 

Jones’s combativeness and obstinance frustrated the purpose of supervised release, 

which was to encourage Jones “to change [his] behavior to conform with societal 

expectations.” 

While the district court did not explicitly reference the § 3553(a) factors

incorporated in § 3583(e), it heard argument from the Government that Jones had 

been uncooperative and exhibited recidivist tendencies, along with rebuttal from 

Jones’s attorney that he had accepted responsibility and needed rehabilitation. See

United States v. Franklin, 397 F.3d 604, 607 (8th Cir. 2005) (finding that knowledge 

of the relevant § 3553(a) factors could be “inferred from the record,” including 

through arguments from counsel). Moreover, we note that the district judge who 

presided over Jones’s revocation hearing also presided over his original sentencing. 

See Miller, 557 F.3d at 918 (finding that the judge who presided over both the 

original and revocation sentencing proceedings was “fully apprised” of the 

defendant’s history and characteristics). Accordingly, we are satisfied that the 

district court sufficiently justified its decision to vary upward from the Guidelines

range. 

B.

Jones next contends that the district court created an unwarranted sentencing 

disparity by varying upward from the bottom of his Guidelines range by 300%. We 

have repeatedly “rejected this percentage-based argument, noting that deviations 
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from the Guidelines range will always appear more extreme—in percentage terms—

when the range itself is low and concluding that the percentage of the variance is 

thus not sufficient in and of itself to find a defendant’s sentence substantively 

unreasonable.” United States v. Clark, 998 F.3d 363, 369 (8th Cir. 2021) (citation 

omitted) (finding that an upward variance of 400% from the bottom of the 

defendant’s Guidelines range was substantively reasonable). Jones also argues that 

his sentence violates the Supreme Court’s admonition that the Guidelines are meant 

“to secure nationwide consistency.” Gall, 552 U.S. at 49. But “the Guidelines are 

not the only consideration” and indeed serve only as the “starting point.” Id. As 

already discussed, the district court acknowledged the Guidelines range before 

engaging in an individualized assessment of Jones’s circumstances, providing a 

reasoned justification for its upward variance. See Clark, 998 F.3d at 370 (rejecting 

the same argument where the district court provided sufficient reasoning for its 

sentencing decision).2

 

C. 

 

Jones finally asserts that his sentence is greater than necessary to achieve the 

objectives of federal sentencing. See 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) (“The court shall impose 

a sentence sufficient, but not greater than necessary, to comply with the purposes set 

forth in [§ 3553(a)(2)].” We have often “stated that variances are appropriate based 

on repeated violations of supervised release.” United States v. Hall, 931 F.3d 694, 

698 (8th Cir. 2019). Here, Jones admitted violating six of his release conditions, and 

many of the violations involved misconduct that the district court found egregious. 

See United States v. Steele, 899 F.3d 635, 639 (8th Cir. 2018) (“Conducting an 

individualized assessment under section 3553(a) can certainly include accounting 

for past misconduct and a ‘terrible history’ on supervised release.”). Jones contends 

2

Jones’s reference to a 2020 report published by the United States Sentencing 

Commission is unpersuasive. Statistics in the report show that nearly 15% of all 

defendants who committed Grade C violations were sentenced to terms exceeding 

their Guidelines ranges, a significant percentage given that the report analyzed over 

59,000 Grade C violations.
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that the district court did not consider the mitigating evidence, such as his desire to 

seek continued mental health treatment. However, the district court properly 

exercised its wide latitude to afford the weight it saw fit to each relevant factor. See

United States v. Wickman, 988 F.3d 1065, 1067 (8th Cir. 2021) (“A defendant’s 

dissatisfaction with a district court’s balancing of the § 3553(a) factors does not 

indicate that the district court abused its discretion.”). Therefore, upon finding no 

abuse of discretion, we conclude that the district court imposed a substantively 

reasonable sentence.

III.

The judgment of the district court is affirmed. 

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