Opinion ID: 4191525
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Reasonableness Challenges

Text: Challenges to the reasonableness of a district court’s sentence are reviewed for abuse of discretion. Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 51 (2007). “A district court abuses its discretion when it applies the incorrect legal standard, misapplies the correct legal standard, or relies upon clearly erroneous findings of fact.” United States v. Fowler, 819 F.3d 298, 303 (6th Cir. 2016) (quoting United States v. Bridgewater, 606 F.3d 258, 260 (6th Cir. 2010)). Challenges to a sentence’s procedural reasonableness, however, are “limited to plain error review if the trial court invited the defendant’s objections to the sentence pursuant to United States v. Bostic, 371 F.3d 865, 871-72 (6th Cir. 2004), and the defendant failed to raise 16 No. 16-2063 the issue at that time.” United States v. Massey, 663 F.3d 852, 856 (6th Cir. 2011); see also United States v. Vonner, 516 F.3d 382, 386 (6th Cir. 2008) (en banc).
Our review of a sentence’s procedural reasonableness proceeds through three steps: First, we must ensure that the district court “correctly calculat[ed] the applicable Guidelines range” which are “the starting point and initial benchmark” of its sentencing analysis. [Gall, 552 U.S. at 51.] In reviewing the district court’s calculation of the Guidelines, we still review the district court’s factual findings for clear error and its legal conclusions de novo. [United States v. Lalonde, 509 F.3d 750, 763 (6th Cir. 2007).] However, the advisory Guidelines range is only one of several factors that the district court must consider at sentencing. See 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). Thus, our second task is to ensure that the district judge gave “both parties the opportunity to argue for whatever sentence they deem appropriate” and then “considered all of the § 3553(a) factors to determine whether they support the sentence requested by [each] party.” [Gall, 552 U.S. at 50]. In evaluating the parties’ arguments, the sentencing judge “may not presume that the Guidelines range is reasonable.” Id.; accord [Rita v. United States, 551 U.S. 338, 351 (2007)]. Rather, the district judge “must make an individualized assessment based on the facts presented” and upon a thorough consideration of all of the § 3553(a) factors. [Gall, 552 U.S. at 50.] After the district court’s evaluation of the parties’ arguments in light of the § 3553(a) sentencing factors, the district judge will impose a sentence and must explain his reasons for selecting the sentence imposed. Accordingly, our final task is to ensure that the district court has “adequately explain[ed] the chosen sentence to allow for meaningful appellate review and to promote the perception of fair sentencing.” Id. Reversible procedural error occurs if the sentencing judge fails to “set forth enough [of a statement of reasons] to satisfy the appellate court that he has considered the parties’ arguments and has a reasoned basis for exercising his own legal decisionmaking authority.” [Rita, 551 U.S. at 356]. United States v. Bolds, 511 F.3d 568, 579–80 (6th Cir. 2007) (footnotes omitted). Defendant argues that his sentence was procedurally unreasonable under a variety of theories. We will address each in turn. 17 No. 16-2063
First, Defendant argues that the district judge procedurally erred by basing his sentence off of improper speculation about future changes Congress might make to the current sentencing regime. In order to understand the import of Defendant’s argument, it is necessary to briefly recount how the district court calculated Defendant’s sentence. As recited earlier, Defendant was convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit bank robbery, two counts of aiding and abetting a bank robbery with forced accompaniment, one count of aiding and abetting an armed bank robbery, and three counts of aiding and abetting the brandishing of a firearm during an armed bank robbery. For the four non-brandishing counts, the district court calculated Defendant’s total offense level at 34, and classified him as a category III offender, yielding a Guidelines range of 188–235 months’ imprisonment that could not be lowered below 120 months because the forced accompaniment charges triggered a ten-year mandatory minimum sentence. See 18 U.S.C. § 2113(e) (“Whoever, in committing any offense defined in this section . . . forces any person to accompany him without the consent of such person, shall be imprisoned not less than ten years.”). Additionally, for the brandishing counts, federal law imposes a mandatory minimum sentence of seven years for the first count, and twenty-five years for each successive count, all to be served consecutively with each other and any other sentence the defendant may receive. See 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A)(ii) (“[I]f the firearm is brandished, [the defendant] shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of not less than 7 years.”); id. § 924(c)(1)(C)(i) (“In the case of a second or subsequent conviction under this subsection, the person shall . . . be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of not less than 25 years.”); id. § 924(c)(1)(D)(ii) (“[N]o term of imprisonment imposed on a person under this subsection shall run concurrently with any other term of imprisonment imposed on the person.”). The district court sentenced Defendant to the bottom of the Guidelines range for the nonbrandishing counts (188 months), plus the required fifty-seven years for the brandishing counts, to reach a total of 872 months’ imprisonment. 18 No. 16-2063 Understandably, given the lengthy mandatory minimums he was facing, Defendant asked the district court to use its limited discretion to give him a below-Guidelines sentence on the four non-brandishing counts. Defendant argued that a sentence significantly below 188 months (but presumably above the 120 month mandatory minimum) would be sufficient, but not greater than necessary, to punish his conduct. In rejecting Defendant’s request, the district court recounted the seriousness of Defendant’s crimes, the psychological scars that Defendant’s crimes would leave on the tellers and customers that were present during the robberies, and Defendant’s failure to take responsibility for his actions despite overwhelming evidence of his guilt. The district court also acknowledged that due to the mandatory minimum sentences required by § 924(c), it had relatively little discretion to give Defendant a more lenient sentence even if his conduct had warranted leniency. The district court further stated that: Regarding the 188 months is where I do have some discretion. And I am fearful that if I say, let’s just pick a number out, let’s say I say 160 months or 120 months then we have a change in statutes. Maybe I shouldn’t worry about the future, and I don’t think it makes a lot of difference actually. (R. 136, Sentencing Tr., PageID #742.) Defendant argues that this passage shows that the district court refused to grant his downward departure because it worried that Congress might one day eliminate the mandatory enhancements for § 924(c) offenses, and thereby leave Defendant with too light a sentence. Defendant concludes that his sentence was thus infected by improper speculation. We disagree. When that passage is read in context of the entire sentencing transcript, it is clear that the district court denied a downward departure because it felt that a lower sentence would not reflect the seriousness of Defendant’s offenses. The district court focused on the tremendous risk the robberies posed to innocent bystanders, the brazenness of the crimes, and Defendant’s general refusal to take any responsibility for his conduct. The district court felt that granting a departure would signal that Defendant’s crimes were less serious than they actually 19 No. 16-2063 were, and concluded that Defendant’s sentence—even with the high mandatory minimums—was sufficient, but not greater than necessary, punishment. We can discern no abuse of discretion in the district court’s decision. The two cases Defendant cites in support of his argument are not on point. In United States v. Recla, 560 F.3d 539, 545–46 (6th Cir. 2009), we held that a district court cannot give a defendant a greater sentence on the understanding that the sentence may later be reduced by a Rule 35(b) motion filed by the government. The district court here did not inflate Defendant’s sentence in anticipation of Congress eventually eliminating the mandatory minimums in § 924(c), but rather found that a below-Guidelines sentence would not reflect the seriousness of Defendant’s offenses. And further, Dean v. United States, 137 S. Ct. 1170, 1176–77 (2017), merely held that nothing “in § 924(c) restricts the authority conferred on sentencing courts by § 3553(a) and the related provisions to consider a sentence imposed under § 924(c) when calculating a just sentence for the predicate count.” The Supreme Court did not hold that district courts are required to factor in § 924(c) mandatory minimums when calculating an appropriate sentence for the predicate offenses. Accordingly, we hold that Defendant’s sentence was not tainted by improper speculation.
At his sentencing hearing, Defendant also argued that he should receive a belowGuidelines sentence to avoid creating a wide disparity between his sentence (more than seventy years) and Benson’s sentence (seventeen years following a guilty plea). See 18 U.S.C. 3553(a)(6). In rejecting this argument, the district court stated: Regarding sentence disparities, that was raised by Mr. Mitchell. Disparity you look at on a national basis, not an individual basis for a particular case. And if people follow the statute, there would be very little disparity for the same crimes. (R. 136, PageID #741.) Defendant argues that a district court may consider individual sentence disparities between co-defendants in addition to the need to avoid creating disparities between 20 No. 16-2063 similarly situated defendants nationwide, and that therefore the district court procedurally erred by failing to consider the disparity between Defendant’s and Benson’s sentences. Defendant is incorrect. As an initial matter, the district court was correct that 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(6) “is concerned with national disparities among the many defendants with similar criminal backgrounds convicted of similar conduct.” United States v. Simmons, 501 F.3d 620, 623 (6th Cir. 2007) (collecting cases). “It is not concerned with disparities between one individual’s sentence and another individual’s sentence, despite the fact that the two are codefendants.” Id. While a district judge “may exercise his or her discretion and determine a defendant’s sentence in light of a co-defendant’s sentence . . . the district court is not required to consider that type of disparity under § 3553(a)(6).” Id. at 624. In other words, the district court correctly stated the law, and its decision not to grant Defendant a downward variance in light of Benson’s sentence was well within its discretion. Moreover, given that the district court heard extensive testimony that Defendant was the “mastermind” behind the burglaries, it was not unreasonable for the district court to conclude that Defendant’s conduct was more culpable than Benson’s. We therefore find no abuse of discretion on this argument as well. iii. Failure to Group Counts Pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 3D1.2 Defendant next argues that the district court committed two related errors in calculating Defendant’s Guidelines range. Because both of these alleged errors relate to how Defendant’s robbery and conspiracy convictions were grouped in calculating his total offense level, we will briefly describe the grouping calculation that the district court performed. Under the Guidelines, when “a defendant has been convicted of more than one count,” the court must: (i) place each offense into a “group,” whereby closely related counts are grouped together for sentencing purposes; (ii) then determine the offense level applicable to each group “by applying the rules specified in [USSG] § 3D1.3;” and finally (iii) determine the “combined offense level” for all of the groups taken together “by applying the rules specified in [USSG] § 3D1.4.” USSG § 3D1.1(a)(1)–(3). In performing the “grouping” at step one, the Guidelines 21 No. 16-2063 specify that a “conviction on a count charging a conspiracy to commit more than one offense shall be treated as if the defendant had been convicted on a separate count of conspiracy for each offense that the defendant conspired to commit.” USSG § 1B1.2(d). Offenses may then be grouped if: (i) the “counts involve the same victim and the same act or transaction;” (ii) the “counts involve the same victim and two or more acts or transactions connected by a common criminal objective or constituting part of a common scheme or plan;” (iii) when “one of the counts embodies conduct that is treated as a specific offense characteristic in, or other adjustment to, the guideline applicable to another of the counts;” or (iv) when “the offense level is determined largely on the basis of the total amount of harm or loss, the quantity of a substance involved, or some other measure of aggregate harm, or if the offense behavior is ongoing or continuous in nature and the offense guideline is written to cover such behavior.” USSG § 3D1.2(a)–(d). In this case, Defendant was charged with aiding and abetting the May 29, 2014, July 29, 2014, and January 8, 2015 robberies, and conspiring to commit both those robberies and the three aborted robberies on October 7, 2014, February 18, 2015, and February 27, 2015. Pursuant to § 1B1.2(d), the conspiracy count divided into six constituent conspiracies—as if the jury had convicted Defendant of separate counts of conspiring to commit each successful and aborted robbery. Section 3D1.2(a) then called on the district court to group each constituent conspiracy to commit a successful robbery with the corresponding charge of aiding and abetting—because they “involve[d] the same victim and the same act or transgression.” This left six offense groups: the pairings for each successful robbery and the constituent conspiracies for each aborted robbery.4 The district court then calculated the aggregate offense level based on these groupings. 4 Curiously, the presentence investigation report (“PSR”) prepared by the probation department effectively found that there were seven offenses to group: in addition to the May 29, 2014, July 29, 2014, and January 8, 2015 robberies, and the aborted robberies on October 7, 2014, February 18, 2015, and February 27, 2015, the PSR also treated Count 1 of the indictment (conspiracy to commit bank robbery) as a separate offense to be grouped. This was erroneous; under § 1B1.2(d), the district court was required to separate Count 1 into its constituent 22 No. 16-2063 Defendant argues that the above-referenced grouping procedure was improper for two reasons.5 First, Defendant argues that the three unconsummated robberies—which were listed as overt acts in furtherance of Defendant’s conspiracy to commit bank robbery in Count 1 of the indictment—should not have been grouped separately, because the verdict form submitted to the jury did not require a special finding that each of the charged overt acts actually occurred. In other words, Defendant argues that he cannot be sentenced on the aborted robberies because the jury was not asked to find that he individually participated in each unsuccessful robbery attempt. However, the logic of our precedents refutes this argument. In United States v. Ford, we held that “robberies may be counted as object offenses of a conspiracy” for Guidelines grouping purposes even “when the conspiracy count under which [the] defendant was convicted does not enumerate or list the robberies.” 761 F.3d 641, 659–60 (6th Cir. 2014). We reasoned that because Application Note 4 in § 1B1.2 “specifically addresses situations where ‘the verdict . . . does not establish which offense(s) was the object of the conspiracy,’ if the [Guidelines] ‘required that the object of a conspiracy be specifically named in the conspiracy count of an indictment, it would be difficult to imagine the reason for this comment’s existence.’” Id. at 660 (quoting United States v. Robles, 562 F.3d 451, 455 (2d Cir. 2009)); see also USSG § 1B1.2 note 4 (“Particular care must be taken in applying subsection (d) because there are cases in which the verdict or plea does not establish which offense(s) was the object of the conspiracy. In such cases, subsection (d) should only be applied with respect to an object offense alleged in the conspiracy count if the court, were it sitting as a trier of fact, would convict the defendant of conspiring to commit that object offense.”). The same reasoning is equally applicable here. conspiracies, and leave Count 1 itself out of the grouping analysis. However, the district court ultimately accepted the PSR’s recommendation to group Count 1 with Count 2 (the May 29, 2014 robbery), leaving the district court with six groups corresponding to the three successful and three aborted robberies. This was the correct grouping arrangement required by the Guidelines. Since neither party has raised the error, and the district court arrived at the correct groups anyway, we will not discuss the matter further. 5 Because Defendant made neither of these arguments before the district court, we review them for plain error. Vonner, 516 F.3d at 386. 23 No. 16-2063 Application Note 4 specifically envisions the scenario at issue in this case, where the district court is asked to sentence a defendant in part based on objects of a conspiracy that were not specifically found by a jury, and instructs district courts to include the alleged offense only if the district judge is convinced that the offense occurred. The clear implication of this note is that the lack of a special jury verdict finding that each of the objects of the conspiracy actually occurred does not prevent a defendant from being sentenced based on those objects. Defendant’s second argument is that the three successful robberies should have been grouped together for sentencing purposes. However, those three robberies were not groupable under any of the four criteria listed in § 3D1.2, and Defendant has put forward no argument to the contrary. We therefore hold that the district court did not err in grouping the successful robberies separately. iv. Alleged Improper Stacking Defendant also argues that he should not have received fifty years’ worth of mandatory sentencing enhancements under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(C)(i), because his second and third brandishing convictions were not “second or subsequent” convictions within the meaning of that statute. Defendant acknowledges that the Supreme Court rejected this precise argument in Deal v. United States, 508 U.S. 129, 130–137 (1993), but raises the argument in order to preserve it for a petition for certiorari. Certainly, the Supreme Court’s interpretation of § 924(c)(1)(C)(i) routinely produces strikingly long prison sentences, and there are perhaps good reasons to believe that Congress did not intend this result. See Deal, 508 U.S. at 138 (Stevens, J., dissenting). Nevertheless, we are bound to follow Deal unless and until the Supreme Court overrules it. We therefore reject this argument as well. 24 No. 16-2063