NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION

File Name: 21a0592n.06

No. 21-2757

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

MARY TARAZI, 

Defendant-Appellant.

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ON APPEAL FROM THE 

UNITED STATES DISTRICT 

COURT FOR THE EASTERN 

DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN

Before: SUHRHEINRICH, WHITE, and STRANCH, Circuit Judges.

SUHRHEINRICH, Circuit Judge. Mary Tarazi, who is serving a six-month sentence for 

her supervised-release violation, challenges the substantive reasonableness of that sentence. 

Finding no abuse of discretion, we affirm the judgment of the district court. 

I.

In 2016, Tarazi was convicted under 18 U.S.C. § 844(a) for willfully making a bomb threat 

against the Spaulding for Children organization in Southfield, Michigan.1 She was sentenced to 

time served followed by one year of supervised release. Id. 

That supervision ended in November 2018 and, within a four-day span that month, Tarazi 

made 23 harassing phone calls to Spaulding. Then she called in another bomb threat to the facility. 

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In 2013, Tarazi’s son was removed from the home and placed at Spaulding. Tarazi eventually lost custody of her 

son. Id.
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Id. Tarazi was indicted, again, for willfully making a bomb threat against Spaulding. She pleaded 

guilty (before a different district court judge) and was sentenced to seven months’ time served, to 

be followed by 36 months’ supervised release.

Tarazi racked up five alleged violations of her supervised-release conditions within the first 

year and a half. See R. 23 ID 124–25 (Violation Report). At her revocation hearing to address 

those five allegations, Tarazi initially admitted to four of them: (1) failing to allow her probation 

officer to visit at any time; (2) failing to participate in approved mental health counseling; 

(3) failing to take all prescribed medications; and (4) failing to refrain from making any threats. 

(The government agreed to dismiss the fifth violation.) In the next breath, however, Tarazi walked 

that admission back, claiming that “most of [the charges] are not valid,” that she had “not 

committed them,” and that she “d[idn’t] remember that happened.” Id. at 152. Specifically, Tarazi 

stated that she always made herself available to speak to her probation officer and that the 

probation officer did not show up at the time promised. Id. at 153–54. 

At that point, Tarazi’s counsel asked to introduce the probation officer’s testimony to 

provide the factual basis for the charges. Id. at 154. Tarazi’s probation officer then detailed the 

underlying facts of each violation. Id. at 154–66. Tarazi’s counsel explained that Tarazi “felt she 

was being harassed by the probation department . . . that the therapist was not really interested in 

her therapy” and that she had not been adequately instructed regarding her medications. Id. at 165. 

And her threats were not meant as “threats” but merely as expressions of her frustration. Id. at 

165–66. She ultimately denied all of the charges. See id. at 168–73. 

The district court found Tarazi guilty of the violations and sentenced her to six months in 

prison, rather than the ten months the government asked for (the top of the guideline range), or 

Tarazi’s requested four-month term. The court explained that “[t]his case originated because 
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[Tarazi was] threatening people.” Id. at 176. Furthermore, Tarazi had “had the privilege of being 

on supervision . . . instead of getting jail time,” which meant that “when the probation officer tells 

you to do something, you have to do it, whether you like it or not.” Id. at 177. The court stated 

that it took Tarazi’s violations “pretty seriously,” that it looked at her background and history, and 

that it did “understand and remember a little bit of that,” id., including “another case in front of 

another judge where [Tarazi] w[as] threatening people,” id. at 176. The court chose a sentence 

that would deter not only Tarazi, but others, from “go[ing] around threatening people” out of 

frustration or aversion. Id. at 177–78. The court revoked Tarazi’s supervision and sentenced her 

to six months in custody. The court imposed no additional supervised release.

II.

Tarazi challenges the substantive reasonableness of her sentence. A sentence is 

substantively unreasonable from a defendant’s perspective if it is too long because the court placed 

too much emphasis on some 28 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factors and not enough on others. United States 

v. Rayyan, 885 F.3d 436, 442 (6th Cir. 2018). Our review of the district court’s decision is “highly 

deferential,” id.; we review only for abuse of discretion, Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 51 

(2007). And we presume a within-guidelines sentence to be reasonable. See United States v. 

Conatser, 514 F.3d 508, 520 (6th Cir. 2008). 

Before revoking a term of supervised release, a district court must consider the 18 U.S.C. 

§ 3553(a) factors. 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3). And “[e]vidence of a criminal defendant's significant 

mental illness, whether occurring before or after the initial sentencing, is . . . relevant to crafting 

a just sentence under § 3553(a).” United States v. Robinson, 778 F.3d 515, 523 (6th Cir. 2015). 

Tarazi contends because the district court was aware of her special mental-health 

conditions, it should have perceived the violations of the conditions of her supervision as caused 
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by her mental health and not as evidence of willful disrespect of the terms of supervision. More 

to the point, Tarazi asserts that “[i]nstead of considering [her] mental health as potential mitigation, 

the district court considered it aggravating and more deserving of punishment,” which is 

“substantively unreasonable.” 

The district court considered Tarazi’s background and history as well as the nature of her 

conduct. As Tarazi acknowledges, the district court was aware of her “mental health challenges,” 

but felt that the nature of her conduct—a history of threatening people (which included the prior 

bomb-threat conviction)—as well as a poor record on supervision, and the need for deterrence, 

were the paramount concerns. The court was not obligated to treat Tarazi’s mental illness as 

mitigating. United States v. Stamp, 790 F. App’x 680, 684 (6th Cir. 2019). Indeed, the Supreme 

Court has instructed that a sentencing judge must “‘consider every convicted person as an 

individual and every case as a unique study in the human failings that sometimes mitigate, 

sometimes magnify, the crime and the punishment to ensue.’” Robinson, 778 F.3d at 523 (quoting 

Koon v. United States, 518 U.S. 81, 113 (1996)); Stamp, 790 F. App’x at 684. The district court 

weighed Tarazi’s situation against the potential for more threatening conduct as well as her 

recalcitrance during supervised release. On this record, we cannot say that the district court gave 

too little weight to Tarazi’s mental condition. Accordingly, we find that Tarazi’s sentence is 

substantively reasonable. 

AFFIRMED.