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16-4216-cr 

United States v. Young 

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 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 12th day of June, two thousand eighteen. 

PRESENT: JOSÉ A. CABRANES, 

GERARD E. LYNCH, 

SUSAN L. CARNEY, 

Circuit Judges. 

 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Appellee, 16-4216-cr 

v. 

LIDDON YOUNG, 

Defendant-Appellant. 

 

FOR APPELLEE: Monica J. Richards, Assistant United 

States Attorney, for James P. Kennedy, Jr., 

United States Attorney, United States 

Attorney’s Office for the Western District 

of New York, Buffalo, NY. 

FOR DEFENDANT-APPELLANT: David C. Pilato, LaDuca Law Firm, LLP, 

Rochester, NY. 

Appeal from a December 12, 2016 amended judgment of the United States District Court 

for the Western District of New York (Frank P. Geraci, Jr., Chief Judge). 
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UPON DUE CONSIDERATION WHEREOF, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, 

ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that the amended judgment of the District Court be, and it 

hereby is, AFFIRMED. 

Defendant-Appellant Liddon Young appeals the District Court’s amended judgment 

convicting him of one count of conspiracy to engage in the business of dealing firearms without a 

license and, in the course of such business, to transport firearms in interstate commerce in violation 

of 18 U.S.C. § 371; one count of unlawful dealing of firearms in violation of 18 U.S.C. 

§§ 922(a)(1)(A), 924(a)(1)(D); and one count of selling firearms to a person knowing or having 

reasonable cause to believe that such person is a felon in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(d)(1), 

924(a)(2). Young also appeals the District Court’s sentence, which consists principally of terms of 

sixty months’ imprisonment each on the first and second counts and eighty months’ imprisonment 

on the third count, the sixty-month terms to run concurrently and the eighty-month term to run 

consecutively to the sixty-month terms.

We assume the parties’ familiarity with the underlying facts, the procedural history of the 

case, and the issues on appeal. 

1. Procedural Reasonableness 

Young argues that his sentence is procedurally unreasonable because the District Court 

improperly applied the two-level obstruction-of-justice enhancement of United States Sentencing 

Guidelines section 3C1.1 and because the District Court based the sentence in part on a clearly 

erroneous finding of fact.

“We review a sentence for procedural . . . reasonableness under a deferential abuse-ofdiscretion standard. . . . A sentence is procedurally unreasonable if the district court fails to calculate 

(or improperly calculates) the Sentencing Guidelines range, treats the Sentencing Guidelines as 

mandatory, fails to consider the § 3553(a) factors, selects a sentence based on clearly erroneous facts, 

or fails adequately to explain the chosen sentence.” United States v. Aldeen, 792 F.3d 247, 251 (2d Cir. 

2015) (emphasis and internal quotation marks omitted). 

Young argues in essence that the District Court should not have applied the enhancement of 

Sentencing Guidelines section 3C1.1 because a statement that Young made to his probation officer 

that he did not know or have reason to believe that the weapons he was selling would be used to 

commit a felony, was not materially false and because the District Court did not find specifically that 

Young had intended to obstruct justice.

Section 3C1.1 of the Sentencing Guidelines provides in relevant part for a two-level 

enhancement “[i]f (1) the defendant willfully obstructed or impeded, or attempted to obstruct or 

impede, the administration of justice with respect to the . . . sentencing of the instant offense of 
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conviction, and (2) the obstructive conduct related to . . . the defendant’s offense of conviction and 

any relevant conduct.” U.S.S.G. § 3C1.1 (U.S. Sentencing Comm’n 2016). To apply this 

enhancement on the basis of a defendant’s false statements, a district court must find both that “the 

defendant had the specific intent to obstruct justice, i.e., that the defendant consciously acted with 

the purpose of obstructing justice,” and that the defendant’s statements were materially false. United 

States v. Young, 811 F.3d 592, 604 (2d Cir. 2016). A material statement is one that “if believed, would 

tend to influence or affect the issue under determination.” U.S.S.G. § 3C1.1 cmt. n. 6. 

We conclude that the District Court’s application of the obstruction-of-justice enhancement 

was not procedurally unreasonable. 

One of Young’s statements to the probation officer preparing his presentence report—

which Young repeated under oath during an evidentiary hearing before the District Court—was that 

he had not trafficked in firearms before he began dealing with a certain Paul Davis. The District 

Court found that Young’s statement was false, see J.A. 443–44, and we conclude that this finding is 

not clearly erroneous. We also conclude that this statement was material, since it bore directly on 

one of the issues that the District Court needed to determine: whether the four-level enhancement 

for having “engaged in the trafficking of firearms” applied to Young. U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(b)(5). We 

therefore need not consider whether the statement Young mentions in his brief was material. 

Moreover, the District Court did find during the resentencing hearing, albeit after it had 

calculated Young’s Sentencing Guidelines range, that Young had specifically intended to obstruct 

justice. See J.A. 454–55 (“[T]he defendant made those statements in order to [a]ffect the ultimate 

sentence and the calculation of the guidelines in this matter.”). We conclude that this finding was 

sufficient. 

Young argues separately that his sentence is procedurally unreasonable because the District 

Court based its sentencing decision in part on a statement, which Young criticizes as clearly 

erroneous, that the weapons Young had sold had resulted in injury or death. This argument is 

meritless because the remark to which Young refers in his brief is not a finding of fact at all; it is a 

general observation about the danger of guns. See J.A. 449 (“We do know those weapons . . . 

obviously result in injuries and/or death to individuals and that’s a matter that cannot be 

understated.”). 

2. Substantive Reasonableness 

Young argues that his sentence is substantively unreasonable because it is “shockingly high 

and greater than necessary to comply with the purposes of sentencing.” Br. Appellant 22.

“We review a sentence for . . . substantive reasonableness under a deferential abuse-ofdiscretion standard.” Aldeen, 792 F.3d at 251 (internal quotation marks omitted). A sentence is 
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substantively unreasonable only if “the trial court’s decision cannot be located within the range of 

permissible decisions.” United States v. Cavera, 550 F.3d 180, 189 (2d Cir. 2008) (en banc) (internal 

quotation marks omitted). In other words, the sentence must be “so shockingly high, shockingly 

low, or otherwise unsupportable as a matter of law that allowing [it] to stand would damage the 

administration of justice.” Aldeen, 792 F.3d at 255 (internal quotation marks omitted). 

After review of the entire record, we conclude that Young’s sentence is not outside “the 

range of permissible decisions” and is therefore not substantively unreasonable. Cavera, 550 F.3d at 

189. 

3. Pro Se Supplemental Brief 

The District Court permitted Young to file a pro se supplemental brief in this appeal. In that 

brief, Young argues among other things that 18 U.S.C. §§ 921(a)(21)(C) and 922(d)(1) are 

unconstitutionally vague. Outside of the First Amendment context, a vagueness challenge is assessed 

“only as applied, i.e., in light of the specific facts of the case at hand and not with regard to the 

statute’s facial validity.” United States v. Rybicki, 354 F.3d 124, 129 (2d Cir. 2003) (en banc) (internal 

quotation marks omitted). These issues were not raised below, so they are reviewed only for plain 

error. United States v. Feliciano, 223 F.3d 102, 115 (2d Cir. 2000). Young cites no authority supporting 

his contention that either of the provisions he challenges is vague as applied to him. The District 

Court therefore could not have made an error that was “clear under current law” by failing to 

overturn sua sponte the jury’s verdict convicting him of violating those statutes. See United States v. 

Bayless, 201 F.3d 116, 128 (2d Cir. 2000). 

CONCLUSION 

We have reviewed all of the remaining arguments raised by Young on appeal and find them 

to be without merit. We therefore AFFIRM the December 12, 2016 amended judgment of the 

District Court. 

 FOR THE COURT: 

 Catherine O’Hagan Wolfe, Clerk