Court Opinion

ID: 9411500
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-07-26 21:00:45.503151+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:21:07.073781
License: Public Domain

USCA4 Appeal: 23-4050      Doc: 10         Filed: 07/25/2023     Pg: 1 of 4

                                             UNPUBLISHED

                               UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
                                   FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

                                               No. 23-4050

        UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

                             Plaintiff - Appellee,

                      v.

        TONY BERNARD ALEXANDER,

                             Defendant - Appellant.

        Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, at
        Charlotte. Max O. Cogburn, Jr., District Judge. (3:18-cr-00202-MOC-DSC-1)

        Submitted: July 20, 2023                                          Decided: July 25, 2023

        Before NIEMEYER and THACKER, Circuit Judges, and KEENAN, Senior Circuit Judge.

        Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.

        Tony B. Alexander, Appellant Pro Se.

        Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.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

                  Tony Bernard Alexander appeals the district court’s order revoking his supervised

        release and sentencing him to time served and a 12-month term of supervised release. We

        affirm.

                  We review the district court’s decision to revoke supervised release for abuse of

        discretion. United States v. Doctor, 958 F.3d 226, 234 (4th Cir. 2020). A district court

        need only find a violation of a condition of supervised release by a preponderance of the

        evidence. See 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3); United States v. Patterson, 957 F.3d 426, 435

        (4th Cir. 2020). “This standard requires only that the existence of a fact be more probable

        than its nonexistence.” Doctor, 958 F.3d at 234 (internal quotation marks omitted). We

        review for clear error a district court’s factual determinations underlying its conclusion that

        a violation of supervised release occurred. Id. When factual findings are based on the

        credibility of witnesses, we afford “great deference” to the district court’s determinations.

        Id.

                  At the revocation hearing, the district court found that Alexander willfully violated

        the conditions of supervised release when he refused to sign the chain of custody form for

        his positive drug test and failed to follow the probation officer’s instructions. In making

        this finding, the district court expressly found that the probation officer’s testimony was

        more credible than Alexander’s testimony. We discern no clear error in the district court’s

        findings and conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in revoking

        Alexander’s supervised release. See 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e); U.S. Sentencing Guidelines

        Manual § 7B1.3(a)(2), p.s. (2018).

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               Turning to Alexander’s revocation sentence, a district court has “broad discretion”

        when imposing a sentence on revocation of supervised release. United States v. Webb, 738

        F.3d 638, 640 (4th Cir. 2013). We will uphold “a revocation sentence so long as it is within

        the prescribed statutory range and is not plainly unreasonable.” United States v. Coston,

        964 F.3d 289, 296 (4th Cir. 2020) (internal quotation marks omitted). Alexander’s

        sentence does not exceed the applicable statutory maximum. Accordingly, the remaining

        question is whether the sentence is plainly unreasonable. We first “determine whether the

        sentence is unreasonable at all.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). “In making this

        determination, we follow generally the procedural and substantive considerations that we

        employ in our review of original sentences, . . . with some necessary modifications to take

        into account the unique nature of supervised release revocation sentences.”          United

        States v. Slappy, 872 F.3d 202, 207 (4th Cir. 2017) (internal quotation marks omitted). “A

        revocation sentence is procedurally reasonable if the district court adequately explains the

        chosen sentence after considering the Sentencing Guidelines’ nonbinding Chapter Seven

        policy statements and the applicable 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factors.” Id. (footnotes omitted);

        see 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e).

               We conclude that Alexander’s sentence is procedurally reasonable. The district

        court properly calculated the 5- to 11-month advisory policy statement range for the

        revocation term of imprisonment and correctly determined the 24-month maximum

        authorized supervised release term. The court also considered the relevant statutory factors

        and explained its rationale for imposing a sentence of time served and for requiring

        Alexander to serve a 12-month term of supervised release in light of Alexander’s history

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        of noncompliance.    Alexander has presented no evidence or argument sufficient to

        overcome the presumption of reasonableness afforded to his below-policy-statement-range

        prison term, see United States v. Louthian, 756 F.3d 295, 306 (4th Cir. 2014) (providing

        standard), and he has not otherwise established that the revocation sentence is plainly

        unreasonable.

              We therefore affirm the district court’s revocation 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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