Court Opinion

ID: 9919648
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-01-18 21:01:05.789046+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:06:14.984269
License: Public Domain

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                                            UNPUBLISHED

                               UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
                                   FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

                                              No. 23-4335

        UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

                            Plaintiff - Appellee,

                     v.

        JONATHAN MARCUS MCCALL,

                            Defendant - Appellant.

        Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, at
        Spartanburg. Bruce H. Hendricks, District Judge. (7:18-cr-00039-BHH-1)

        Submitted: November 30, 2023                                      Decided: January 17, 2024

        Before KING and RUSHING, Circuit Judges, and TRAXLER, Senior Circuit Judge.

        Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.

        ON BRIEF: Howard W. Anderson III, TRULUCK THOMASON LLC, Greenville, South
        Carolina, for Appellant. Leesa Washington, Assistant United States Attorney, OFFICE OF
        THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Greenville, South Carolina, for Appellee.

        Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.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

               Jonathan Marcus McCall pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to

        distribute and to distribute cocaine base, cocaine, and heroin, in violation of 21 U.S.C.

        § 846, and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime and aiding and

        abetting, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2, 924(c)(1)(A). The district court sentenced McCall

        to 157 months’ imprisonment, followed by a five-year term of supervised release, and he

        now appeals.

               On appeal, McCall asserts that the district court erred by including in the written

        judgment conditions of supervised release that were not orally pronounced at sentencing.

        The Government moves to dismiss the appeal as barred by the appellate waiver contained

        in McCall’s plea agreement. Rather than contesting the validity of the waiver, McCall

        contends that his argument on appeal falls outside the waiver’s scope. For the following

        reasons, we deny the Government’s motion but affirm the criminal judgment.

               “[I]n order to sentence a defendant to a non-mandatory condition of supervised

        release, the sentencing court must include that condition in its oral pronouncement of a

        defendant’s sentence in open court.” United States v. Singletary, 984 F.3d 341, 345

        (4th Cir. 2021) (citing United States v. Rogers, 961 F.3d 291, 296 (4th Cir. 2020)). A valid

        appeal waiver does not preclude a defendant from asserting a Rogers claim. See Singletary,

        984 F.3d at 345. Thus, the waiver in McCall’s plea agreement does not bar review of the

        issue he raises on appeal, and we therefore deny the Government’s motion to dismiss the

        appeal.

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               Turning to the merits, we review McCall’s claim of Rogers error de novo. See

        United States v. Cisson, 33 F.4th 185, 193 (4th Cir. 2022). As is relevant here, a district

        court may “satisfy its obligation to orally pronounce discretionary conditions through

        incorporation—by incorporating, for instance, all [Sentencing] Guidelines ‘standard’

        conditions when it pronounces a supervised-release sentence, and then detailing those

        conditions in the written judgment.” Rogers, 961 F.3d at 299.

               McCall contends that the district court failed to orally announce or incorporate the

        13 standard conditions of supervised release listed in the criminal judgment. Our holding

        in Cisson forecloses this claim. In Cisson, the district court stated at sentencing “that it

        would impose the ‘mandatory and standard conditions’ of supervised release.” 33 F.4th at

        194 (emphasis omitted). We observed that the District of South Carolina has no standing

        order listing supervised release conditions that differ from the standard conditions in the

        Guidelines. Id.; see U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual § 5D1.3(c), p.s. (2023). “Thus,

        there [wa]s no other set of ‘standard’ conditions to which the court could have been

        referring other than the Guidelines ‘standard’ conditions.” Cisson, 33 F.4th at 194.

        Because there were no other standard conditions of supervision to which the district court

        could have been referring in this case, and McCall’s judgment does not impose any

        additional discretionary conditions of supervised release that were not incorporated in the

        court’s oral pronouncement, we conclude that the district court sufficiently pronounced the

        standard conditions of supervision. See id.

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              Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s 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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