United States v. Anthony Andrews ( 2022 )

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UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 20-7908
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
ANTHONY ANDREWS, a/k/a Wheat,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, at
Wilmington. Richard E. Myers, II, Chief District Judge. (7:01-cr-00027-M-1)
Submitted: July 26, 2022 Decided: July 29, 2022
Before MOTZ, KING, and THACKER, Circuit Judges.
Vacated and remanded by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Anthony Andrews, Appellant Pro Se. Kristine L. Fritz, Assistant United States Attorney,
Jennifer P. May-Parker, Assistant United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED
STATES ATTORNEY, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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PER CURIAM:
Anthony Andrews appeals the district court’s order denying his motion for
compassionate release pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A), as amended by the First Step
Act of 2018, Pub. L. No. 115-391, 132 Stat. 5194. We vacate the district court’s order and
remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
We review a district court’s ruling on a motion for compassionate release for abuse
of discretion. United States v. Kibble, 992 F.3d 326, 329 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 142 S. Ct.
383 (2021). A district court abuses its discretion when it “acts arbitrarily or irrationally,
. . . fails to consider judicially recognized factors constraining its exercise of discretion, . . .
relies on erroneous factual or legal premises, or . . . commits an error of law.” United States
v. High, 997 F.3d 181, 187 (4th Cir. 2021) (cleaned up).
We briefly recount the procedural history of this case as it is necessary for our
disposition. In 2001, Andrews pled guilty, pursuant to a written plea agreement, to
distributing at least five grams of cocaine base, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1). The
district court sentenced Andrews to 162 months of imprisonment and 5 years of supervised
release.
After Andrews served his active sentence and was serving his term of supervised
release, the probation officer moved to revoke Andrews’ supervised release because a
grand jury returned an indictment alleging that Andrews conspired to manufacture,
distribute, dispense, and possess with intent to distribute Endocet, Methadone, Oxycodone,
Oxycontin, and Oxymorphone, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846. The indictment alleging
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new criminal conduct was filed in a case before District Judge Dever. District Judge Boyle
presided over the proceedings related to the revocation of Andrews’ supervised release.
Andrews pled guilty before Judge Dever, and Judge Boyle continued the revocation
proceedings pending sentencing on Andrews’ new conviction. Judge Dever sentenced
Andrews to 132 months’ imprisonment. Judge Boyle then revoked Andrews’ supervised
release and imposed a 12-month, consecutive sentence.
Andrews subsequently filed identical motions for compassionate release before
Judges Boyle and Dever. Andrews’ motions sought relief based on the risk of infection
posed by COVID-19. In August 2020, Judge Dever denied the motion filed in his case.
We affirmed Judge Dever’s order. United States v. Andrews, 837 F. App’x 195, 195 (4th
Cir. 2021) (No. 20-7329).
After Judge Dever denied his motion, Andrews filed an “addendum” in the case
before Judge Boyle; he argued that his sentence on the new criminal charge and his
revocation sentence were now aggregated as one sentence by the Bureau of Prisons.
Andrews also argued that he would have been subject to a shorter sentence on his 2001
conviction had the changes in interpretation of the career offender Sentencing Guidelines
and Section 404 of the First Step Act of 2018 been in effect at that time. Counsel then filed
a supplemental memorandum on Andrews’ behalf, addressing Andrews’ health conditions,
his risk of contracting a severe case of COVID-19 and the applicable 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)
factors. While this motion was pending, the district court reassigned Andrews’ case from
Judge Boyle to Chief District Judge Myers.
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Judge Myers also denied Andrews’ compassionate release motion. He recognized
that Andrews filed identical motions in March 2020 before Judges Boyle and Dever. Judge
Myers believed that Judge Dever’s order denying Andrews’ motion was dispositive
because the two sentences were aggregated. Accordingly, Judge Myers denied Andrews’
motion as moot. Andrews now appeals Judge Myers’ order.
On appeal, Andrews focuses heavily on Judge Myers’ use of the word moot,
contending that Judge Myers believed he did not have the authority to reduce Andrews’
sentence. We disagree with this reading of the order. In our view, Judge Myers understood
that he could reduce Andrews’ sentence, at least as to the 12-month revocation sentence.
But in the interest of deferring to Judge Dever, Judge Myers opted not to reconsider Judge
Dever’s decision on the compassionate release motion. Because the initial motions were
identical, we believe that Judge Myers rightfully exercised his discretion to defer to Judge
Dever’s order.
However, because Judge Dever denied Andrews’ motion before Andrews filed his
supplement raising a new claim, Judge Dever did not address this new claim, nor did Judge
Myers address it in his order. We have held that “district courts are empowered to consider
any extraordinary and compelling reason for release that a defendant might raise.” United
States v. McCoy, 981 F.3d 271, 274 (4th Cir. 2020) (cleaned up). Thus, Judge Myers could
have considered this argument.
We have clarified that a district court need not address every argument raised by a
defendant in a compassionate release motion. High, 997 F.3d at 187. Instead, “the
touchstone must be whether the district court set forth enough to satisfy our court that it
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has considered the parties’ arguments and has a reasoned basis for exercising its own legal
decisionmaking authority, so as to allow for meaningful appellate review.” Id. at 190
(cleaned up). While we conclude that Judge Myers was not required to analyze Andrews’
motion more extensively as it related to COVID-19, we believe he should have addressed
Andrews’ supplemental filing in which he asserted an additional basis for compassionate
release due to changes in the law since his 2001 conviction. Cf. McCoy, 981 F.3d at 286
(recognizing district court can consider nonretroactive changes in law in considering
whether to grant defendant compassionate release).
Accordingly, we vacate the district court’s order and remand for further proceedings
consistent with this opinion. We reject Andrews’ request to reassign this case to a different
judge on remand. While we grant Andrews’ motion for judicial notice, we deny all other
pending motions in this case. 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.
VACATED AND REMANDED
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