Court Opinion

ID: 9352466
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-01-06 17:00:34.039338+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:03:15.796654
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 21-12471    Document: 28-1     Date Filed: 01/06/2023   Page: 1 of 7

                                                  [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                   In the
                United States Court of Appeals
                        For the Eleventh Circuit

                          ____________________

                                No. 21-12471
                          Non-Argument Calendar
                          ____________________

       UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
                                                      Plaintiff-Appellee,
       versus
       FERRELL WALKER,

                                                  Defendant-Appellant.

                          ____________________

                 Appeal from the United States District Court
                     for the Middle District of Georgia
                  D.C. Docket No. 7:07-cr-00030-HL-TQL-1
                          ____________________
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       2                      Opinion of the Court                21-12471

       Before LUCK, LAGOA, and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges.
       PER CURIAM:
               Ferrell Walker appeals his sentence of imprisonment for vi-
       olating conditions of his supervised release. He argues that the dis-
       trict court violated his right against double jeopardy because the
       conduct that formed the basis of the sentence also formed the basis
       of a separate prosecution. He argues in the alternative that the sen-
       tence is unreasonable. Because the first argument is foreclosed by
       precedent and the second is unsupported by the record, we affirm.
                                       I.

               In 2007, Walker pleaded guilty to one count of possessing
       child pornography. During the term of supervised release included
       in his sentence, the government searched his home and discovered
       a cell phone containing more than one thousand images of child
       pornography, a photograph of his driver’s license, a nude photo-
       graph that he had taken of himself, and a sexually explicit messag-
       ing thread with photographs of Walker’s face and unidentified
       male genitalia. Upon finding that Walker violated conditions of his
       supervised release by possessing these materials, the district court
       revoked his supervised release and sentenced him to sixty months’
       imprisonment, the statutory minimum under section 3583(k), fol-
       lowed by twenty-five years’ supervised release. In a separate crim-
       inal action, Walker was convicted of possessing child pornography
       and was sentenced to 168 months’ imprisonment and a lifetime
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       21-12471                    Opinion of the Court                        3

       term of supervised release to be served consecutively and concur-
       rently with his revocation sentence, respectively.
               Walker appealed both sentences. After consolidating the
       cases, we affirmed his sentence for possession but remanded his
       revocation sentence on ex post facto grounds because the sixty-
       month mandatory minimum provision of section 3583(k) was not
       in effect when Walker was sentenced in 2007. On remand, the dis-
       trict court resentenced Walker under section 3583(e)(3)—the stat-
       ute in effect in 2007—to the statutory maximum sentence of
       twenty-four months’ imprisonment followed by twenty-five years’
       supervised release.
                 Walker appeals the district court’s revocation sentence.
       First, he argues that, under Haymond,1 the district court violated
       the Double Jeopardy Clause by basing his revocation sentence on
       the same set of facts used in his prosecution for possessing child
       pornography. Second, he argues that his statutory maximum sen-
       tence is substantively unreasonable.
                                             II.

              We review “claims of double jeopardy de novo.” United
       States v. Campo, 840 F.3d 1249, 1267 (11th Cir. 2016) (emphasis
       omitted). The Double Jeopardy Clause provides that no person
       shall “be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy

       1
           United States v. Haymond, 139 S. Ct. 2369 (2019).
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       4                      Opinion of the Court                21-12471

       of life or limb.” U.S. Const. amend. V. “This guarantees against a
       second prosecution for the same offense after acquittal, a second
       prosecution for the same offense after conviction, and multiple
       punishments for the same offense.” United States v. Bobb, 577
       F.3d 1366, 1371 (11th Cir. 2009).
              Walker argues that his sentences were based on “the same
       conduct” and thus “he was twice placed in jeopardy and twice pun-
       ished for the same offense . . . in violation of the Fifth Amend-
       ment.” He bases this argument on the proposition that “[t]he facts
       in Haymond are almost identical to the facts presented in [this]
       case.”
               However “identical” the facts of these cases may be, the cor-
       responding law is dissimilar. Haymond dealt only with section
       3583(k), under which Walker originally was sentenced for violating
       the conditions of his supervised release. See 139 S. Ct. at 2386
       (Breyer, J., concurring). But Haymond did not disturb our prece-
       dent that a sentence for violating supervised release under section
       3583(e)(3), under which Walker was resentenced, doesn’t violate
       the Double Jeopardy Clause because it isn’t a successive punish-
       ment for the same offense but rather is a part of the penalty for the
       initial offense. See Johnson v. United States, 529 U.S. 694, 700
       (2000); United States v. Woods, 127 F.3d 990, 992–93 (11th Cir.
       1997). Haymond has no bearing on this case. See 139 S. Ct. at 2383
       (plurality opinion) (“As we have emphasized, our decision is lim-
       ited to [section] 3583(k) . . . and the Alleyne problem raised by its
       [five]-year mandatory minimum term of imprisonment.”).
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       21-12471               Opinion of the Court                         5

                                        III.

               We review a “sentence imposed upon the revocation of su-
       pervised release for reasonableness.” United States v. Velasquez
       Velasquez, 524 F.3d 1248, 1252 (11th Cir. 2008). To this end, we
       must ensure that the district court didn’t commit a “significant pro-
       cedural error,” Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 51 (2007), “fail[]
       to afford consideration to relevant factors that were due significant
       weight, give[] significant weight to an improper or irrelevant fac-
       tor, or commit[] a clear error of judgment in considering the proper
       factors,” United States v. Irey, 612 F.3d 1160, 1189 (11th Cir. 2010)
       (en banc) (cleaned up).
               “On appeal, [Walker] bears the burden to show that his sen-
       tence is unreasonable.” United States v. Carpenter, 803 F.3d 1224,
       1232 (11th Cir. 2015). “Given the broad sentencing discretion that
       district courts have,” United States v. Rosales-Bruno, 789 F.3d 1249,
       1261 (11th Cir. 2015), we do not overturn a sentencing decision un-
       less we are “left with the definite and firm conviction that the dis-
       trict court committed a clear error of judgment . . . by arriving at a
       sentence that lies outside the range of reasonable sentences dic-
       tated by the facts of the case,” Irey, 612 F.3d at 1190 (internal quo-
       tation omitted).
              Walker hasn’t carried his burden to show such “clear error
       of judgment.” He doesn’t argue that the district court committed
       any procedural error. Instead, he argues only that “the applicable
       [guidelines] range of imprisonment is [four] to [ten] months.”
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       6                           Opinion of the Court                        21-12471

               But the record lacks any indication that the district court
       failed to treat the guidelines as advisory, selected a sentence based
       on clearly erroneous facts, or failed to explain the chosen sentence
       adequately. The district court articulated the section 3553(a) fac-
       tors used to support its sentence, including the need “to reflect the
       seriousness of the offense, to promote respect for the law, to pro-
       vide just punishment for the violation offenses, and to protect the
       public from further crimes of” Walker. It noted that Walker was
       “intentionally deceptive” about his “possession and use of inter-
       net[-]capable devices which allowed [him] to commit further
       crimes of possession of child pornography.” It heard the parties’
       arguments at length and explicitly stated that it considered the ad-
       visory guidelines range and the totality of the circumstances. The
       record therefore shows that the district court “considered the par-
       ties’ arguments and ha[d] a reasoned basis for exercising [its] own
       legal decisionmaking authority.” United States v. Livesay, 525 F.3d
       1081, 1090 (11th Cir. 2008) (internal quotation omitted).
              As to supervised release, for a defendant convicted for pos-
       sessing child pornography, such as Walker, a district court may im-
       pose “any term of years or life” under section 3583(k). 2 Walker’s
       twenty-five-year term of supervised release, which is well below

       2
         Unlike the sixty-month mandatory minimum, this provision was in effect in
       2007 and was unaffected by Haymond. See 139 S. Ct. at 2379 n.4 (“Because
       we hold that this mandatory minimum rendered Mr. Haymond’s sentence un-
       constitutional . . . we need not address the constitutionality of the statute's ef-
       fect on his maximum sentence under Apprendi.” (citations omitted)).
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       21-12471              Opinion of the Court                       7

       this statutory maximum, is reasonable for all the reasons the dis-
       trict court gave under section 3553(a). See United States v. Gonza-
       lez, 550 F.3d 1319, 1324 (11th Cir. 2008).
                                CONCLUSION

              Binding precedent forecloses Walker’s argument that his
       revocation sentence violated his right against double jeopardy, and
       the record does not support his argument that it is unreasonable.
       Thus, we affirm the sentence.
             AFFIRMED.