Court Opinion

ID: 9959514
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-04-11 21:00:37.062369+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:17:34.589853
License: Public Domain

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                                             UNPUBLISHED

                               UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
                                   FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

                                               No. 22-4694

        UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

                             Plaintiff - Appellee,

                      v.

        JOSEPH CURTIS HUBMAN,

                             Defendant - Appellant.

        Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, at
        Huntington. Robert C. Chambers, District Judge. (3:22-cr-00024-1)

        Submitted: March 6, 2024                                          Decided: April 10, 2024

        Before WYNN and HARRIS, Circuit Judges, and KEENAN, Senior Circuit Judge.

        Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.

        ON BRIEF: Wesley P. Page, Federal Public Defender, Rhett H. Johnson, Assistant
        Federal Public Defender, Jonathan D. Byrne, OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL PUBLIC
        DEFENDER, Charleston, West Virginia, for Appellant. William S. Thompson, United
        States Attorney, Lesley S. Shamblin, Assistant United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE
        UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Charleston, West Virginia, for Appellee.

        Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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        PER CURIAM:

               Joseph Curtis Hubman pled guilty to possession of child pornography involving

        prepubescent minors, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(5)(B), (b)(2). The district court

        calculated Hubman’s advisory imprisonment range under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines

        Manual (2018) at 78 to 97 months and, after imposing an upward variance, sentenced

        Hubman to 120 months’ imprisonment.                Hubman challenges the substantive

        reasonableness of this sentence on appeal. We affirm.

               “We review the reasonableness of a [criminal] sentence under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)

        using an abuse-of-discretion standard, regardless of whether the sentence is inside, just

        outside, or significantly outside the Guidelines range.” United States v. Nance, 957 F.3d

        204, 212 (4th Cir. 2020) (cleaned up). “[A] sentence outside the Guidelines carries no

        presumption of unreasonableness.” Irizarry v. United States, 553 U.S. 708, 714 (2008).

               In reviewing the substantive reasonableness of a sentence, * “we examine the totality

        of the circumstances to see whether the sentencing court abused its discretion in concluding

        that the sentence it chose satisfied the standards set forth in § 3553(a).” United States v.

        Abed, 3 F.4th 104, 119 (4th Cir. 2021) (cleaned up). “Where, as here, the sentence is

        outside the advisory Guidelines range, we must consider whether the sentencing court acted

        reasonably both with respect to its decision to impose such a sentence and with respect to

        the extent of the divergence from the sentencing range.” Nance, 957 F.3d at 215 (internal

               *
                We have confirmed after review of the record that the sentence is procedurally
        reasonable. See United States v. Provance, 944 F.3d 213, 215, 218 (4th Cir. 2019).

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        quotation marks omitted). “[E]ven though we might reasonably conclude that a different

        sentence is appropriate, that conclusion, standing alone, is an insufficient basis to vacate

        the district court’s chosen sentence.” United States v. Zuk, 874 F.3d 398, 409 (4th Cir.

        2017) (cleaned up). Rather, “we must give due deference to the district court’s decision

        that the § 3553(a) factors, on a whole, justify the extent of the variance.” Abed, 3 F.4th at

        119 (internal quotation marks omitted).

               Hubman argues that his prison term is substantively unreasonable because the

        district court placed undue weight on the vast size of the collection of child pornography

        he possessed and the fact that he made and possessed a video of his son and overlooked

        other relevant factors like his criminal history score of zero and his age. Although the

        district court sentenced Hubman to a prison term 23 months above the top end of the

        Guidelines range, we conclude that the imposition of this term was not an abuse of

        discretion under the totality of the circumstances. The record reflects that the district court

        considered Hubman’s request for a below-Guidelines prison term and weighed it against

        the serious nature of his offense conduct in possessing an extensive collection of child

        pornography across multiple devices, his fixation on his pornography, and the needs for

        the sentence imposed to reflect the serious nature of his conduct and to afford adequate

        deterrence, see 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(1), (2)(A)-(B). Although “reasonable jurists could

        perhaps have balanced those competing factors differently and arrived at a different result,

        we cannot conclude that this is one of the rare cases where the sentence imposed by the

        district court was substantively unreasonable in light of the § 3553(a) factors.” Abed, 3

        F.4th at 119 (cleaned up).

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               We thus affirm the criminal judgment. We dispense with oral argument because the

        facts and legal contentions are adequately presented in the materials before this court and

        argument would not aid the decisional process.

                                                                                      AFFIRMED

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