Court Opinion

ID: 9931102
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-02-08 16:01:34.482685+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:16:59.608792
License: Public Domain

United States Court of Appeals
                           For the Eighth Circuit
                       ___________________________

                               No. 23-2290
                       ___________________________

                           United States of America

                                     Plaintiff - Appellee

                                       v.

                             Anthony Terrell Jones

                                  Defendant - Appellant
                                ____________

                    Appeal from United States District Court
              for the Western District of Missouri - Jefferson City
                                ____________

                        Submitted: November 17, 2023
                           Filed: February 8, 2024
                                [Unpublished]
                               ____________

Before COLLOTON, BENTON, and SHEPHERD, Circuit Judges.
                          ____________

PER CURIAM.

      Anthony Jones challenges the substantive reasonableness of the 24-month
sentence that the district court1 imposed upon revoking his supervised release.
Having jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm.

      1
      The Honorable Stephen R. Bough, United States District Judge for the
Western District of Missouri.
                                          I.

       Jones pled guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18
U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1) and 924(a)(2). The district court sentenced him to 30 months’
imprisonment with 3 years of supervised release to follow. Soon after commencing
supervised release in 2022, the United States Probation Office issued a report
alleging that Jones had violated several release conditions by consuming alcohol and
drugs and removing a sweat patch to evade detection. Less than a week later, the
Probation Office issued a second report alleging that Jones had violated several more
release conditions by disobeying the directions of his probation officer and failing
to participate in psychosexual- and alcohol-monitoring evaluations. The report
further noted that Jones was not amenable to supervision and frequently—often
combatively—resisted the Probation Office’s directives. Pursuant to the report’s
recommendation, the district court ordered a show-cause hearing. Before the
hearing, the Probation Office issued three additional reports alleging that Jones had
violated his release conditions by repeatedly using drugs and failing to participate in
substance-abuse counseling.

       Jones failed to appear at his show-cause hearing, which constituted another
violation of a release condition. Jones was apprehended five weeks later at the home
of a convicted felon, where law enforcement discovered marijuana inside the
residence and on Jones’s person. The district court subsequently ordered a
revocation hearing, and the Probation Office issued another report alleging that
Jones had violated three additional release conditions by living in an unapproved
residence, interacting with a known felon, and possessing drugs. At his revocation
hearing, Jones admitted six of the eight alleged violations, which were categorized
as Grade C. The district court sentenced him to the statutory maximum of 24
months’ imprisonment, varying upward from the United States Sentencing
Guidelines range of 8 to 14 months’ imprisonment.

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                                            II.

       Jones appeals, arguing that the district court abused its discretion by imposing
a substantively unreasonable sentence. “We review the reasonableness of a
revocation sentence under the same deferential abuse-of-discretion standard that
applies to initial sentencing proceedings.” United States v. Elbert, 20 F.4th 413, 416
(8th Cir. 2021). A district court abuses its discretion when it “fails to consider a
relevant and significant factor, gives significant weight to an irrelevant or improper
factor, or considers the appropriate factors but commits a clear error of judgment in
weighing those factors.” United States v. Doerr, 42 F.4th 914, 918 (8th Cir. 2022)
(citation omitted).

                                             A.

        Jones first asserts that the district court failed to adequately justify its decision
to vary upward. In fashioning a revocation sentence, a district court should consider
the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) sentencing factors incorporated in 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e),
United States v. Johnson, 827 F.3d 740, 745 (8th Cir. 2016), and “make an
individualized assessment based on the facts presented,” Gall v. United States, 552
U.S. 38, 50 (2007). “If [a district court] decides that an outside-Guidelines sentence
is warranted, [it] must consider the extent of the deviation and ensure that the
justification is sufficiently compelling to support the degree of the variance.” Id.
“We afford the court wide latitude to weigh the § 3553(a) factors in each case and
assign some factors greater weight than others in determining an appropriate
sentence.” United States v. DeMarrias, 895 F.3d 570, 574 (8th Cir. 2018) (citation
omitted). In this vein, a district court need not make specific factual findings for
each factor that it considers. United States v. Miller, 557 F.3d 910, 917 (8th Cir.
2009). Rather, “[a]ll that is generally required to satisfy the appellate court is
evidence that the district court was aware of the relevant factors.” Id. (citation
omitted).

                                            -3-
       Here, the district court conducted an individualized assessment after
determining the Guidelines range, finding that Jones demonstrated “a pattern of
noncompliant behavior” and was extremely disrespectful to law enforcement and
court staff. On one occasion, for example, Jones sent a text message to his probation
officer requesting to purchase a joint of marijuana from her, which the district court
opined demonstrated a “flagrant disregard” for the justice system. The district court
further noted the significant resources that the Probation Office had expended to
admit Jones to an inpatient rehabilitation program, a decision that proved to be an
exercise in futility given Jones’s subsequent misconduct. It ultimately found that
Jones’s combativeness and obstinance frustrated the purpose of supervised release,
which was to encourage Jones “to change [his] behavior to conform with societal
expectations.”

       While the district court did not explicitly reference the § 3553(a) factors
incorporated in § 3583(e), it heard argument from the Government that Jones had
been uncooperative and exhibited recidivist tendencies, along with rebuttal from
Jones’s attorney that he had accepted responsibility and needed rehabilitation. See
United States v. Franklin, 397 F.3d 604, 607 (8th Cir. 2005) (finding that knowledge
of the relevant § 3553(a) factors could be “inferred from the record,” including
through arguments from counsel). Moreover, we note that the district judge who
presided over Jones’s revocation hearing also presided over his original sentencing.
See Miller, 557 F.3d at 918 (finding that the judge who presided over both the
original and revocation sentencing proceedings was “fully apprised” of the
defendant’s history and characteristics). Accordingly, we are satisfied that the
district court sufficiently justified its decision to vary upward from the Guidelines
range.

                                          B.

      Jones next contends that the district court created an unwarranted sentencing
disparity by varying upward from the bottom of his Guidelines range by 300%. We
have repeatedly “rejected this percentage-based argument, noting that deviations
                                         -4-
from the Guidelines range will always appear more extreme—in percentage terms—
when the range itself is low and concluding that the percentage of the variance is
thus not sufficient in and of itself to find a defendant’s sentence substantively
unreasonable.” United States v. Clark, 998 F.3d 363, 369 (8th Cir. 2021) (citation
omitted) (finding that an upward variance of 400% from the bottom of the
defendant’s Guidelines range was substantively reasonable). Jones also argues that
his sentence violates the Supreme Court’s admonition that the Guidelines are meant
“to secure nationwide consistency.” Gall, 552 U.S. at 49. But “the Guidelines are
not the only consideration” and indeed serve only as the “starting point.” Id. As
already discussed, the district court acknowledged the Guidelines range before
engaging in an individualized assessment of Jones’s circumstances, providing a
reasoned justification for its upward variance. See Clark, 998 F.3d at 370 (rejecting
the same argument where the district court provided sufficient reasoning for its
sentencing decision).2

                                          C.

       Jones finally asserts that his sentence is greater than necessary to achieve the
objectives of federal sentencing. See 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) (“The court shall impose
a sentence sufficient, but not greater than necessary, to comply with the purposes set
forth in [§ 3553(a)(2)].” We have often “stated that variances are appropriate based
on repeated violations of supervised release.” United States v. Hall, 931 F.3d 694,
698 (8th Cir. 2019). Here, Jones admitted violating six of his release conditions, and
many of the violations involved misconduct that the district court found egregious.
See United States v. Steele, 899 F.3d 635, 639 (8th Cir. 2018) (“Conducting an
individualized assessment under section 3553(a) can certainly include accounting
for past misconduct and a ‘terrible history’ on supervised release.”). Jones contends

      2
       Jones’s reference to a 2020 report published by the United States Sentencing
Commission is unpersuasive. Statistics in the report show that nearly 15% of all
defendants who committed Grade C violations were sentenced to terms exceeding
their Guidelines ranges, a significant percentage given that the report analyzed over
59,000 Grade C violations.
                                          -5-
that the district court did not consider the mitigating evidence, such as his desire to
seek continued mental health treatment. However, the district court properly
exercised its wide latitude to afford the weight it saw fit to each relevant factor. See
United States v. Wickman, 988 F.3d 1065, 1067 (8th Cir. 2021) (“A defendant’s
dissatisfaction with a district court’s balancing of the § 3553(a) factors does not
indicate that the district court abused its discretion.”). Therefore, upon finding no
abuse of discretion, we conclude that the district court imposed a substantively
reasonable sentence.

                                          III.

      The judgment of the district court is affirmed.
                     ______________________________

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