Court Opinion

ID: 9385486
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-04-06 21:00:20.812294+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:18:02.155075
License: Public Domain

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                                            UNPUBLISHED

                               UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
                                   FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

                                              No. 20-4525

        UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

                            Plaintiff - Appellee,

                     v.

        ANDREW CHANCE, III,

                            Defendant - Appellant.

        Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, at
        Columbia. Terry L. Wooten, Senior District Judge. (3:18-cr-00445-TLW-1)

        Submitted: March 27, 2023                                         Decided: April 5, 2023

        Before AGEE and HARRIS, Circuit Judges, and MOTZ, Senior Circuit Judge.

        Affirmed and remanded by unpublished per curiam opinion.

        ON BRIEF: Emily Deck Harrill, Assistant Federal Public Defender, OFFICE OF THE
        FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellant. Corey F.
        Ellis, United States Attorney, Katherine Hollingsworth Flynn, Assistant United States
        Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Florence, South Carolina,
        for Appellee.

        Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.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

               Andrew Chance, III, appeals the sentence imposed by the district court following

        his guilty plea to being a felon in possession of firearms and ammunition, in violation of

        18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), 924(a)(2) (2018). The district court sentenced Chance to 96

        months’ imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release. On appeal, Chance

        asserts that one of the discretionary conditions of supervised release in his amended

        criminal judgment is inconsistent with the court’s oral pronouncement of that condition at

        sentencing and that the court failed to orally pronounce all of the discretionary supervised

        release conditions that appear in the amended judgment. We affirm but remand for

        correction of a clerical error.

               “[A] district court must orally pronounce all non-mandatory conditions of

        supervised release at the sentencing hearing.” United States v. Singletary, 984 F.3d 341,

        344 (4th Cir. 2021). “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.” Id. (citing United States v. Rogers, 961 F.3d

        291, 300-01 (4th Cir. 2020)). 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. When, as here, “a defendant claims that a district court committed a Rogers error,

        we 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) (cleaned up).

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               On appeal, Chance contends that the district court failed to orally announce or

        incorporate the 13 standard conditions of supervised release listed in the amended criminal

        judgment. Here, the district court ordered Chance to “comply with the mandatory and

        standard conditions of supervision outlined at [18 U.S.C. § 3583(d)].” (J.A. 290-91). *

        Chance argues that, because § 3583(d) does not list standard conditions, and instead only

        describes the criteria for imposing discretionary conditions, the district court could not have

        imposed the 13 standard conditions listed in the amended judgment by reference to

        § 3583(d). Although Chance is correct that § 3583(d) does not list standard conditions,

        Cisson forecloses his 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. (2018). “Thus,

        there [was] no other set of ‘standard’ conditions to which the [district] 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 district court

        could have been referring in this case, the district court sufficiently pronounced through

        incorporation the standard conditions in the Guidelines. See id.

               Chance also argues the district court committed Rogers error because the description

        of the first condition in the amended judgment materially differed from the court’s oral

               *
                   “J.A.” refers to the Joint Appendix filed by the parties in this appeal.

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        pronouncement of that condition at sentencing. At sentencing, the district court ordered

        that, upon his release from custody, Chance report to the probation office in the federal

        judicial “district to which [he] is released.” (J.A. 290). The amended judgment, however,

        instructed that, upon his release, Chance report to the probation office in the “district where

        [he is] authorized to reside.” (J.A. 331). Chance asserts that this facial discrepancy

        constituted Rogers error.

               To be sure, a material discrepancy between a discretionary condition as pronounced

        and as detailed in a written judgment may constitute Rogers error. See Cisson, 33 F.4th at

        194 & n.6. However, Chance fails to demonstrate a reversible inconsistency under Rogers.

        The district court at the sentencing hearing not only orally pronounced through

        incorporation the standard conditions in USSG § 5D1.3(c), p.s., which included the

        condition that Chance report to the probation office in the district where he is authorized

        to reside, but also ordered Chance to report to the district in which he is released. Thus,

        the district court’s oral pronouncement itself was inconsistent as it left ambiguous where

        Chance must report upon his release from custody. “[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)). We are satisfied that the written judgment’s inclusion of the

        reporting condition in USSG § 5D1.3(c)(1), p.s., dispels the ambiguity in the district

        court’s oral pronouncement and confirms the court’s intent to require Chance to report to

        the probation office in the district where he is authorized to reside.

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              Accordingly, we affirm the amended judgment. We remand, however, for the

        district court to correct a clerical error. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 36. Although the amended

        judgment references 18 U.S.C. § 924(e), the district court did not sentence Chance as an

        armed career criminal; we remand for correction to delete the errant reference. 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 AND
                                                                                  REMANDED

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