Court Opinion

ID: 9352081
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-01-04 21:00:53.653898+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:57:52.478222
License: Public Domain

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                                             UNPUBLISHED

                               UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
                                   FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

                                               No. 21-4037

        UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

                             Plaintiff - Appellee,

                     v.

        WELDON MOTIC JACKSON,

                            Defendant - Appellant.

        Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, at
        Greenville. Richard E. Myers, II, Chief District Judge. (4:20-cr-00020-M-1)

        Submitted: September 21, 2022                                     Decided: January 3, 2023

        Before AGEE and HARRIS, Circuit Judges, and Lydia K. GRIGGSBY, United States
        District Judge for the District of Maryland, sitting by designation.

        Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.

        ON BRIEF: G. Alan DuBois, Federal Public Defender, Stephen C. Gordon, Assistant
        Federal Public Defender, Eric Joseph Brignac, Chief Appellate Attorney, OFFICE OF THE
        FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellant. Michael F.
        Easley, Jr., United States Attorney, David A. Bragdon, Assistant United States Attorney,
        OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellee.

        Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.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

               Weldon Motic Jackson pleaded guilty to drug and firearm offenses and was

        sentenced to a prison term and a three-year term of supervised release. He now appeals

        two discretionary conditions of his supervised release, arguing that the district court failed

        to orally pronounce those conditions at sentencing as required by United States v. Rogers,

        961 F.3d 291 (4th Cir. 2020). We disagree. The district court clearly incorporated by

        reference the conditions in question, as permitted by our precedents. Accordingly, we

        affirm Jackson’s sentence.

                                                      I.

               On June 25, 2020, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North

        Carolina adopted Standing Order 20-SO-8 (“the Standing Order”), which remained in

        effect at all relevant times. 1 The Standing Order enumerated 15 “standard” discretionary

        conditions of supervised release. Among them were the two “financial conditions” at issue

        in this appeal: “You must not incur new credit charges or open additional lines of credit

        without the approval of the probation officer,” and “You must provide the probation officer

        with access to any requested financial information.” J.A. 92. The Standing Order further

        specified that unless otherwise indicated by the sentencing judge, “any reference in the

        pronouncement of a sentence to the ‘Standard Conditions of Supervision as adopted in the

               1
                   The June 2020 Standing Order has since been replaced with a new standing order.

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        Eastern District of North Carolina’ shall be deemed to refer to and incorporate” the

        Standing Order and its listed conditions. J.A. 89.

               Weldon Motic Jackson pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute heroin,

        crack cocaine, and marijuana, and to being a felon in possession of a firearm. He was

        sentenced in the Eastern District of North Carolina on January 26, 2021, seven months after

        the Standing Order was issued. At that hearing, the district court sentenced Jackson to 154

        months’ imprisonment followed by three years of supervised release. As to the conditions

        of supervised release, the district court announced the following:

                      Further, after careful consideration of the provisions of Title 18
                      United States Code Section 3583(d) and the sentencing factors
                      outlined in Title 18 United States Code Section 3553(a), the
                      defendant shall comply with the mandatory and standard
                      conditions of supervision as adopted in the Eastern District of
                      North Carolina . . . .

        J.A. 72. The court went on to discuss certain specific conditions but did not otherwise

        address the two financial conditions now at issue.

               Those conditions did appear, however, in the written judgment later issued by the

        district court. That judgment included all 15 “standard” conditions from the Standing

        Order. As relevant here, the written judgment stated, “The defendant shall not incur new

        credit charges or open additional lines of credit without approval of the probation office,”

        and “The defendant shall provide the probation office with access to any requested

        financial information,” J.A. 82 – conditions substantively identical to the fourteenth and

        fifteenth conditions in the Standing Order.

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               Jackson timely appealed his sentence on the ground that the district court failed to

        orally pronounce the two financial conditions that later appeared in the judgment, which

        constituted an error under United States v. Rogers, 961 F.3d 291 (4th Cir. 2020). 2

                                                     II.

               In Rogers, we held that because a defendant has the right to be present for

        sentencing, a district court must orally announce during sentencing all discretionary

        conditions of supervised release. 961 F.3d at 296–97. If a discretionary condition appears

        for the first time in a written judgment after the sentencing hearing, it is a “nullit[y] and

        necessitat[es] a remand for resentencing.” Id. at 295; United States v. Singletary, 984 F.3d

        341, 344 (4th Cir. 2021).

               At the same time, we made clear that a district court may satisfy its obligation to

        orally announce discretionary conditions in ways other than specifying each individual

        condition at sentencing. Rogers, 961 F.3d at 299. Instead, “a district court may incorporate

        by reference a condition or set of conditions,” Singletary, 984 F.3d at 346, including “a

        court-wide standing order that lists certain conditions of supervised release,” Rogers, 961

        F.3d at 299. “[S]o long as the defendant is informed orally that a certain set of conditions

        will be imposed on his supervised release, . . . a later-issued written judgment that details

               2
                 The government moved to dismiss Jackson’s appeal as barred by the appeal waiver
        in his plea agreement. In United States v. Singletary, however, we held that a valid appeal
        waiver does not preclude a Rogers claim. 984 F.3d 341, 344 (4th Cir. 2021). We therefore
        denied the motion to dismiss.

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        those conditions may be construed fairly as a clarification” of the earlier oral

        pronouncement. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).

               That is precisely what happened here.        The district court announced that the

        conditions it was imposing included the “standard conditions of supervision as adopted in

        the Eastern District of North Carolina,” J.A. 72, pointing directly to the district’s Standing

        Order. It used exactly the language the Standing Order prescribes for incorporation by

        reference. See J.A. 89 (“[A]ny reference in the pronouncement of a sentence to the

        ‘Standard Conditions of Supervision as adopted in the Eastern District of North Carolina’

        shall be deemed to refer to and incorporate [the Standing Order].”). And even assuming,

        for the sake of argument, some ambiguity as to the contours of the oral sentence, the written

        judgment would have clarified it, see Rogers, 961 F.3d at 299, because the list of

        discretionary conditions in the judgment mirrors the standard discretionary conditions from

        the Standing Order. Compare J.A. 81–82 (judgment), with J.A. 90–92 (Standing Order).

               In short, the district court complied with Rogers when it clearly and specifically

        incorporated by reference the Standing Order’s standard discretionary conditions, among

        them the two financial conditions Jackson challenges on appeal. It follows that the district

        court did not err when it included those two conditions of supervised release in its later-

        issued written judgment. 3

               3
                 Given this holding, we need not address the parties’ debate about the proper
        standard of review for Jackson’s claim. Whether our review is de novo or only for plain
        error makes no difference; there is no Rogers error in this case, plain or otherwise.

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                                                   III.

              For the reasons given above, the judgment of the district court is affirmed.

                                                                                      AFFIRMED

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