Court Opinion

ID: 9964964
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-05-01 15:00:45.799723+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:25:50.942598
License: Public Domain

22-1707-cr
United States v. Skinner

                           UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
                               FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT
                                      SUMMARY ORDER
Rulings by summary order do not have precedential effect. Citation to a summary order
filed on or after January 1, 2007, is permitted and is governed by Federal Rule of Appellate
Procedure 32.1 and this court’s Local Rule 32.1.1. When citing a summary order in a
document filed with this court, a party must cite either the Federal Appendix or an
electronic database (with the notation “summary order”). A party citing a summary order
must serve a copy of it on any party not represented by counsel.

          At a stated term of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit,
held at the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, 40 Foley Square, in the
City of New York, on the 1st day of May, two thousand twenty-four.

          PRESENT:         John M. Walker, Jr.,
                           Steven J. Menashi,
                           Eunice C. Lee,
                                    Circuit Judges.
____________________________________________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

                   Appellant,

             v.                                                       No. 22-1707-cr

WILLIAM SKINNER, AKA SEALED DEFENDANT 2,

                   Defendant-Appellee. *

____________________________________________

*   The Clerk of Court is directed to amend the caption as set forth above.
For Appellant:                                 HAGAN         SCOTTEN,    Assistant
                                               United States Attorney (Andrew
                                               K. Chan, Adam S. Hobson, Frank
                                               Balsamello, Won S. Shin, Assistant
                                               United States Attorneys, on the
                                               brief), for Damian Williams, United
                                               States Attorney for the Southern
                                               District of New York, New York,
                                               NY.

For Defendant-Appellee:                        NICHOLAS PINTO, Attorney at Law
                                               (George R. Goltzer, Law Office of
                                               George Robert Goltzer, on the
                                               brief), New York, NY.

      Appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern
District of New York (Ramos, J.).

      Upon due consideration, it is hereby ORDERED, ADJUDGED, and
DECREED that the order of the district court of June 6, 2022, is VACATED and
REMANDED for further proceedings consistent with this order.

      Defendant-Appellee William Skinner pleaded guilty pursuant to a plea
agreement to conspiracy to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute
cocaine and cocaine base in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846 and § 841(b)(1)(C). As part
of the agreement, Skinner admitted that he participated in the murder of Efren
Cardenas in order to further the conspiracy. The district court imposed on Skinner
a time-served sentence of 73 months, to be followed by three years of supervised
release, with a special condition of 12 months of home detention and a $100 special
assessment. The government appeals this sentence as substantively unreasonable.

      We “review[] sentences for reasonableness under the deferential abuse of
discretion standard.” United States v. Kadir, 718 F.3d 115, 125 (2d Cir. 2013). This

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review is not a “rubber stamp,” United States v. Rigas, 583 F.3d 108, 122 (2d Cir.
2009), but it is “particularly deferential,” United States v. Broxmeyer, 699 F.3d 265,
289 (2d Cir. 2012). While “giving due deference to the sentencing judge’s exercise
of discretion, and bearing in mind the institutional advantages of district courts,”
this court “take[s] into account the totality of the circumstances.” United States v.
Cavera, 550 F.3d 180, 190 (2d Cir. 2008). “As part of our substantive reasonableness
inquiry, we also look to the District Court’s own explanation at the sentencing
hearing” and evaluate the substantive reasonableness of that explanation. United
States v. Park, 758 F.3d 193, 201 (2d Cir. 2014).

      We will conclude that a district court has abused its discretion only when it
“(1) based its ruling on an erroneous view of the law, (2) made a clearly erroneous
assessment of the evidence, or (3) rendered a decision that cannot be located
within the range of permissible decisions.” United States v. Zhong, 26 F.4th 536, 551
(2d Cir. 2022) (quoting Warren v. Pataki, 823 F.3d 125, 137 (2d Cir. 2016)). A sentence
will meet the third prong when it is “so ‘shockingly high, shockingly low, or
otherwise unsupportable as a matter of law’ that allowing [it] to stand would
‘damage the administration of justice.’” Broxmeyer, 699 F.3d at 289 (quoting Rigas,
583 F.3d at 123).

      In reviewing a non-Guidelines sentence, we “take the degree of variance
into account and consider the extent of a deviation from the Guidelines,” but we
do not use a “rigid mathematical formula.” Cavera, 550 F.3d at 190 (quoting Gall v.
United States, 552 U.S. 38, 47 (2007)). “We do not presume that a non-Guidelines
sentence is unreasonable, nor do we require extraordinary circumstances to justify
a deviation from the Guidelines range.” United States v. Stewart, 590 F.3d 93, 135
(2d Cir. 2009) (internal quotation marks omitted). “[V]ariations from the
Guidelines ‘may attract greatest respect when the sentencing judge finds a
particular case outside the heartland to which the Commission intends individual
Guidelines to apply.’” Id. at 135-36 (quoting Kimbrough v. United States, 552 U.S. 85,
89 (2007)).

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      We assume the parties’ familiarity with the underlying facts, the procedural
history, and the issues on appeal.

                                           I

      Although the Guidelines sentence was 240 months of imprisonment, the
district court imposed a substantially lower sentence after “consider[ing] all of the
[sentencing] factors set forth in Section 3553(a) of Title 18, including, as most
relevant to Mr. Skinner’s situation, the nature and circumstances of the offense and
his history and characteristics.” App’x 149. The district court acknowledged that
“[i]n the federal system, there is no more serious crime than intentional murder.”
Id. at 150. Accordingly, the district court stated that “if … my only job is to punish
based on the act, then yes, 20 years is appropriate.” Id. at 153. However, the district
court imposed a lower sentence because it took “into account what Mr. Skinner
has done over the last three decades, and he has basically done everything that we
would want him to do.” Id. The district court explained that, in contrast to other
defendants with a similar background, “Skinner went on to do something which
is unique in my experience, in that he completely … turned his life around. He
worked, he raised a family, and he created a community of people around him
who respected him, admired him, and he did that for 30-plus years.” Id. at 153-54.
The district court viewed Skinner’s rehabilitation—coupled with the lack of any
need for specific deterrence—as a justification for a substantially below-Guidelines
sentence.

      We do not “substitute our own judgment for the district court’s on the
question of what is sufficient to meet the § 3553(a) considerations in any particular
case,” Cavera, 550 F.3d at 189, and “[t]he particular weight to be afforded
aggravating and mitigating factors is a matter firmly committed to the discretion
of the sentencing judge,” Broxmeyer, 699 F.3d at 289 (internal quotation marks
omitted). Accordingly, we conclude that it was not necessarily an abuse of
discretion for the district court to determine that Skinner’s rehabilitation justified
a substantial deviation from the Guidelines.

                                          4
                                         II

      Nonetheless, the government argues that the district court misapprehended
the seriousness of Skinner’s crime, rendering the sentence substantively
unreasonable. See Appellant’s Br. 20-26. Because “the District Court’s own
explanation” of the sentence is part of the substantive reasonableness inquiry,
Park, 758 F.3d at 201, if the district court predicated the sentence on a
misapprehension of the seriousness of the crime, the sentence would be
substantively unreasonable. The record, however, is ambiguous on this point.

      In explaining its sentence, the district court discussed two prior intentional
murder cases that had come before it. Those cases, according to the district court,
“were different in their own ways, but did provide some important context for
me.” App’x 150. The district court described a previous murder arising out of a
battle for narcotics territory between two rival gangs, which it described as “not
unlike the situation here,” id. at 151, and another murder arising from a gang
rivalry, in which—for the participants—“it was like playing cowboys and Indians,
there was no respect, no appreciation for the sanctity of human life, but that’s what
they knew,” id. at 152. The district court explained that “Skinner was involved in
that same culture,” and “that’s who Mr. Skinner was at the time, that’s what he
was doing at the time.” Id.

      The government objects to the district court’s suggestion that Skinner’s
crime was comparable to the earlier murders involving gang rivalries, in which
the victims could easily have been perpetrators and vice versa. See Appellant’s Br.
24. As the government notes, “the Cardenas murder targeted a non-violent and
non-threatening drug dealer whom Skinner’s co-conspirators lured to the scene
for the purpose of ambushing him[, and] [t]here was no evidence or argument
whatsoever that Efren Cardenas had any past, present, or future intention of
harming Skinner or” his fellow gang members. Id. According to the government,
Skinner’s crime was worse than these others, and he should have received a higher
sentence than the defendants in those cases. When the district court sentenced

                                         5
Skinner’s co-defendants, the district court acknowledged that Cardenas was not
violent and “that Cardenas was ‘assassinated in cold blood in the street for
drugs.’” Id. at 25 (quoting App’x 196-97). The government argues that the district
court failed to appreciate this context when sentencing Skinner, given that it
imposed a higher sentence on Skinner’s co-defendants based on an accurate
understanding of the circumstances surrounding the crime.

      If the district court based its sentence on an understanding that Skinner’s
crime was part of a back-and-forth retaliatory cycle of gang violence, it was
substantively unreasonable because that characterization does not match the
record. It is not clear, however, that the district court relied on such an
understanding. The government’s interpretation is plausible. But there is another
plausible interpretation. The district court’s discussion of the culture of violence
reflected in the other murders immediately preceded its discussion of how
“Skinner was involved in that same culture,” and “that’s who Mr. Skinner was at
the time,” but that Skinner has since done “something which is unique in my
experience, in that he completely, by all accounts, turned his life around.” App’x
152-53. In other words, the district court’s discussion of the culture of gang
violence might not have been intended as a description of the severity of Skinner’s
crime but as an illustration of the degree of Skinner’s rehabilitation. If that were
the district court’s intention, the sentence would not be substantively
unreasonable. Because the district court acknowledged the seriousness of murder,
stated that 20 years would be an appropriate sentence based on the crime alone,
and expressed a detailed understanding of the crime’s seriousness with respect to
the co-defendants, this second interpretation is as plausible as the government’s.

                                        III

      Given the ambiguity in the record regarding how the district court decided
on the sentence imposed, a remand is appropriate for the district court to clarify
its understanding of the circumstances regarding the severity of the crime. We
therefore vacate and remand for further proceedings. Although we remand for

                                         6
clarification as to the basis of the sentence, on remand the district court may
reconsider any of the parties’ arguments with regard to sentencing. Cf. United
States v. Lespier, No. 22-1372, 2024 WL 208117, at *3 (2d Cir. Jan. 19, 2024)
(“Although we remand for clarification as to the basis for the denial of
compassionate release, on remand the district court may consider [the defendant-
appellant’s] arguments and determine that it would instead grant the motion for
compassionate release.”).

                                  *     *     *

       We have considered the parties’ remaining arguments, which we conclude
are without merit. For the foregoing reasons, we vacate and remand the case to the
district court.

                                      FOR THE COURT:
                                      Catherine O’Hagan Wolfe, Clerk of Court

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