Filed: Apr. 05, 2019
Latest Update: Mar. 03, 2020
Summary: UNPUBLISHED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT No. 18-4708 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. ROOSEVELT O. MOOD, Defendant - Appellant. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, at Charleston. David C. Norton, District Judge. (2:04-cr-00682-DCN-1) Submitted: March 26, 2019 Decided: April 5, 2019 Before WILKINSON, NIEMEYER, and WYNN, Circuit Judges. Affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded by unpublished per curiam o
Summary: UNPUBLISHED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT No. 18-4708 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. ROOSEVELT O. MOOD, Defendant - Appellant. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, at Charleston. David C. Norton, District Judge. (2:04-cr-00682-DCN-1) Submitted: March 26, 2019 Decided: April 5, 2019 Before WILKINSON, NIEMEYER, and WYNN, Circuit Judges. Affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded by unpublished per curiam op..
More
UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 18-4708
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
ROOSEVELT O. MOOD,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, at
Charleston. David C. Norton, District Judge. (2:04-cr-00682-DCN-1)
Submitted: March 26, 2019 Decided: April 5, 2019
Before WILKINSON, NIEMEYER, and WYNN, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Charles W. Cochran, Assistant Federal Public Defender, OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL
PUBLIC DEFENDER, Charleston, South Carolina, for Appellant. Sean Kittrell,
Assistant United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY,
Charleston, South Carolina, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Roosevelt O. Mood was originally sentenced to 180 months’ imprisonment for
being a felon in possession of a firearm, 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1), 924(e)(1) (2012), but
was resentenced to time served after his armed career criminal enhancement was found to
be erroneous under Johnson v. United States,
135 S. Ct. 2551, 2557-58 (2015).
Thereafter, Mood violated the terms of his supervised release and was sentenced to 24
months’ imprisonment for the violations. Mood appeals from the revocation judgment.
Counsel has filed a brief pursuant to Anders v. California,
386 U.S. 738 (1967), claiming
there are no meritorious issues for appeal, but asking whether the district court erred by
declining to give him sentencing credit for the excess time he served on his § 922(g)
offense. Although notified of his right to do so, Mood has not filed a pro se supplemental
brief, and the Government has elected not to respond to the Anders brief. We affirm the
revocation of Mood’s supervised release but vacate his revocation sentence and remand
for resentencing.
In analyzing a revocation sentence, we apply “a more deferential appellate posture
concerning issues of fact and the exercise of discretion than reasonableness review for
[Sentencing G]uidelines sentences. . . . We will affirm a revocation sentence if it is within
the statutory maximum and is not plainly unreasonable.” United States v. Slappy,
872
F.3d 202, 207 (4th Cir. 2017) (internal quotation marks omitted). “[E]ven if a revocation
sentence is plainly unreasonable, we will still affirm it if we find that any errors are
harmless.”
Id.
2
We determine reasonableness by generally following the procedural and
substantive considerations used in reviewing original sentences.
Id. “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) [(2012)] factors.”
Id. (footnotes
omitted); see 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e) (2012).
Where the defendant or prosecutor presents nonfrivolous reasons for
imposing a different sentence than that set forth in the advisory Guidelines,
a district judge should address the party’s arguments and explain why he
has rejected those arguments. . . . And although the court need not be as
detailed or specific when imposing a revocation sentence as it must be
when imposing a postconviction sentence, it still must provide a statement
of reasons for the sentence imposed.
Id. at 207-08 (alteration, ellipsis, citations, and internal quotation marks omitted).
Mood did not contest his supervised release violations but requested a downward
variance sentence based on the excess time he served on the sentence for his original
§ 922(g) offense. The district court announced Mood’s revocation sentence without
explicit consideration of any of the applicable § 3553(a) factors, although it adopted the
supervised release violation report, which discussed Mood’s history and characteristics of
the offenses and the need for the sentence imposed to protect the public from further
crimes, 18 U.S.C. §§ 3553(a)(1), (2)(C), but it failed to address Mood’s argument for a
lower sentence. Thus, even considering our deferential standard of review, the district
court’s failure to sufficiently explain the revocation sentence rendered the sentence
procedurally unreasonable. And because the requirement to explain a revocation
sentence is well-settled in this circuit, we further conclude that the sentence was plainly
3
unreasonable. See
Slappy, 872 F.3d at 210. We express no view on the substantive
reasonableness of Moore’s revocation sentence, leaving that to the good judgment of the
trial court when accompanied by sufficient explanation.
In accordance with Anders, we have reviewed the entire record in this case and
have found no other meritorious issues for appeal. Accordingly, we affirm the revocation
of Mood’s supervised release, but we vacate his revocation sentence and remand for
resentencing. This court requires that counsel inform Mood, in writing, of the right to
petition the Supreme Court of the United States for further review. If Mood requests that
a petition be filed, but counsel believes that such a petition would be frivolous, then
counsel may move in this court for leave to withdraw from representation. 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 IN PART,
VACATED IN PART, AND REMANDED
4