Court Opinion

ID: 9400700
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-06-08 21:01:02.428929+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:19:47.412920
License: Public Domain

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                                            UNPUBLISHED

                               UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
                                   FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

                                              No. 22-4354

        UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

                            Plaintiff - Appellee,

                     v.

        JAMES ANTHONY ASHFORD, a/k/a Pop-A-Lot,

                            Defendant - Appellant.

        Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, at
        Columbia. Margaret B. Seymour, Senior District Judge. (3:11-cr-02264-MBS-1)

        Submitted: May 1, 2023                                               Decided: June 7, 2023

        Before DIAZ and HARRIS, Circuit Judges, and TRAXLER, Senior Circuit Judge.

        Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.

        ON BRIEF: Kimberly H. Albro, Assistant Federal Public Defender, OFFICE OF THE
        FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellant. Adair F.
        Boroughs, United States Attorney, Andrew R. De Holl, Assistant United States Attorney,
        OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Charleston, South Carolina, for
        Appellee.

        Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.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

               James Anthony Ashford appeals the district court’s judgment revoking his

        supervised release and sentencing him to 18 months’ imprisonment, followed by 12

        months’ supervised release. Ashford makes four claims on appeal: (1) that the district court

        erred by permitting the government to proffer Ashford’s prison disciplinary history without

        producing a witness, (2) that the court’s announcement of a condition of supervised release

        conflicted with the written judgment, (3) that the Government failed to prove by a

        preponderance of the evidence that he engaged in new criminal conduct, and (4) that the

        district court’s revocation sentence was procedurally unreasonable because the court failed

        to provide an adequate explanation. We affirm.

               Under Fed. R. Crim. P. 32.1(b)(2)(C), a defendant at a revocation hearing is entitled

        to “an opportunity to appear, present evidence, and question any adverse witness unless the

        court determines that the interest of justice does not require the witness to appear.”

        Subsection (C) directs that “prior to admitting hearsay evidence in a revocation hearing,

        the district court must balance the releasee’s interest in confronting an adverse witness

        against any proffered good cause for denying such confrontation.” United States v. Combs,

        36 F.4th 502, 506 (4th Cir. 2022) (internal quotation marks omitted).

               Here, Ashford successfully challenged the government’s attempt to admit the record

        of his prison disciplinary history during his probation officer’s testimony. During closing

        argument, the government described Ashford’s disciplinary history in part to counter

        Ashford’s claim that his conduct was accidental and not willful. The district court

        reiterated that the evidence was not admitted and that it would not necessarily consider the

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        evidence as it made its decision. Nor did the court cite Ashford’s disciplinary history as

        one of the reasons for finding that Ashford engaged in new criminal conduct. So, we see

        no error.

               Next, Ashford asserts that the district court erred because the description of the first

        standard condition, the reporting requirement, in the judgment materially differed from the

        court’s oral pronouncement of that condition at sentencing. The district court must

        announce all non-mandatory conditions of supervised release at sentencing. United States

        v. Rogers, 961 F.3d 291, 296 (4th Cir. 2020). “Discretionary conditions that appear for the

        first time in a subsequent written judgment . . . are nullities; the defendant has not been

        sentenced to those conditions, and a remand for resentencing is required.” United States

        v. Singletary, 984 F.3d 341, 344 (4th Cir. 2021). To “satisfy its obligation to orally

        pronounce discretionary conditions,” a district court may do so “through incorporation—

        by incorporating, for instance, all 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. “[W]e review the consistency of the defendant’s oral sentence

        and the written judgment de novo.” United States v. Cisson, 33 F.4th 185, 193 (4th Cir.

        2022) (internal quotation marks omitted).

               We recognize that the first standard condition in the judgment differed from the

        court’s announcement of that condition but was identical to the first standard condition at

        U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual § 5D1.3(c), p.s. But the effect of that discrepancy is

        undercut because the court also announced that Ashford must “comply with the mandatory

        and standard conditions of supervision outlined in Title 18, United States Code, Section

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        3583(d) and United States Sentencing Guideline Section 5D1.3(c).” (Joint Appendix 103-

        04). Thus, the court orally announced two versions of the first standard condition.

        “[W]here the precise contours of an oral sentence are ambiguous, we may look to the

        written judgment to clarify the district court’s intent.” Rogers, 961 F.3d at 299 (citing

        United States v. Osborne, 345 F.3d 281, 283 n.1 (4th Cir. 2003)). In light of the district

        court’s conflicting oral pronouncements, we can rely on the written judgment as evidence

        of the court’s intent to require Ashford to comply with the reporting condition in USSG

        § 5D1.3(c)(1), p.s. Therefore, we find no error.

               Nor did the district court err in revoking Ashford’s supervised release. “A district

        court may revoke supervised release if it finds by a preponderance of the evidence that the

        defendant violated a condition of supervised release. This burden simply requires the trier

        of fact to believe that the existence of a fact is more probable than its nonexistence. United

        States v. Patterson, 957 F.3d 426, 435 (4th Cir. 2020) (citation and internal quotation marks

        omitted).

               We review the district court’s revocation of supervised release for abuse of

        discretion, evaluating any legal conclusions de novo and the court’s factual determinations

        for clear error. Id. We must determine whether the district court’s account of the evidence

        is plausible in light of the entire record viewed. “This standard plainly does not entitle a

        reviewing court to reverse the finding of the trier of fact simply because it is convinced that

        it would have decided the case differently.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).

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               The district court properly relied on witness testimony, surveillance video, and

        screenshots from the video to find by a preponderance of the evidence that Ashford

        engaged in new criminal conduct. We conclude that there was no error.

               Finally, we turn to the district court’s revocation sentence. “A revocation sentence

        is procedurally reasonable if the district court adequately explains the chosen sentence after

        considering the Sentencing Guidelines’ nonbinding Chapter Seven policy statements and

        the applicable 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factors. The sentence is substantively reasonable if, in

        light of the totality of the circumstances, the court states an appropriate basis for concluding

        that the defendant should receive the sentence imposed.” United States v. Coston, 964 F.3d

        289, 297 (4th Cir. 2020) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted).

               We “will affirm a revocation sentence if it is within the statutory maximum and is

        not ‘plainly unreasonable.’ And even if a revocation sentence is plainly unreasonable, we

        will still affirm it if we find that any errors are harmless.” United States v. Slappy, 872

        F.3d 202, 207 (4th Cir. 2017) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). “The

        requirements that a district court meaningfully respond to the parties’ nonfrivolous

        arguments and sufficiently explain the chosen sentence are intended to allow for

        meaningful appellate review and to promote the perception of fair sentencing. And

        although the court need not be as detailed or specific when imposing a revocation sentence

        as it must be when imposing a post-conviction sentence, it still must provide a statement

        of reasons for the sentence imposed.” Id. at 207-08 (citations and internal quotation marks

        omitted).

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               Ashford contends that the district court ignored his arguments in favor of a more

        lenient sentence. But the court focused on the one factor all parties agreed was needed:

        mental health treatment. Ashford admitted that, while on supervised release, he failed to

        appear for several mental health treatment appointments. In imposing the 18-month term

        of imprisonment, the court ordered the Bureau of Prisons to assess Ashford’s mental health

        and provide mental health treatment as deemed necessary.       And the court ordered that

        Ashford continue his mental health treatment while on supervised release. We thus

        conclude that there was no procedural error in the court’s sentence.

               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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