Opinion ID: 782364
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Sentence for Firearm Offense

Text: Lavigne first contests the reasonableness of his 108-month sentence for his firearm offense. Procedurally, he asserts that the District Court failed adequately to consider his “history and characteristics,” 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(1). Substantively, he maintains that his sentence is “overly harsh.” Undergirding both challenges is Lavigne’s history of substance abuse and struggle to overcome it. He began abusing alcohol and marijuana before he was a teenager. By the time he was 22, Lavigne claims, he was using a considerable amount of heroin every day. Given this history, he was unable to remain sober after his two and a half years of incarceration for the heroin-related offenses. His prior sentence, he notes, did not include mandatory drug treatment. 4 Lavigne thus does not challenge the first two procedural steps of sentencing. At any rate, it appears that the District Court properly calculated his Guidelines range and considered departure motions. The third step, which Lavigne emphasizes, requires not just that the Court acknowledge the § 3553(a) factors but that it undertake a “‘true, considered exercise of discretion . . . [,]including a recognition of, and response to, the parties’ non-frivolous arguments.’” Friedman, 658 F.3d at 359 (quoting United States v. Jackson, 467 F.3d 834, 841 (3d Cir. 2006)). Here, the District Court addressed each § 3553(a) factor at the sentencing hearing in detail. It expressly considered Lavigne’s struggles with substance abuse, making note of each of the substances that he has used, as well as the duration and quantities of his use. That history is the chief mitigating factor that counsel urged to the Court. Against that history, the Court weighed the seriousness of the offense to which Lavigne pled guilty, the need for deterrence, and the sentences provided in the Guidelines and in analogous cases. See 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(2), (a)(4), (a)(6). The Court stressed that Lavigne was “likely to reoffend” given his history and that he had “harm[ed] the community in providing a market and source for controlled substances which have specific and tragic consequences for those addicted to the substances, as well as general consequences for the community.” In light of the Court’s thorough attention to the specific facts of this case, we cannot say that it abused its discretion. Lavigne also makes a substantive challenge to the duration of his sentence. He contends that his offense, given his history, warranted “a sentence slightly below the advisory [G]uideline range.” We disagree. Provided that the District Court has followed 5 the proper procedure, its sentence is substantively reasonable unless “no reasonable sentencing court would have imposed the same sentence on that particular defendant for the reasons the district court provided.” Tomko, 562 F.3d at 568. Lavigne has not cleared this high threshold. His sentence appears reasonable for the reasons given by the District Court. Bolstering that conclusion is the Court’s recommendation that the Bureau of Prisons admit Lavigne to its 500-hour drug treatment program. In addition, the Court was uniquely familiar with Lavigne’s case, having also imposed the below-Guidelines sentence for his heroin offenses in 2009. For these reasons, we hold that Lavigne’s 108-month sentence for his § 922(g)(1) offense was both procedurally and substantively reasonable.