United States v. Steve Washington , 673 F. App'x 341 ( 2017 )

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 16-4535
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
STEVE DANTAY WASHINGTON,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern
District of West Virginia, at Huntington. Robert C. Chambers,
Chief District Judge. (3:98-cr-00018-1)
Submitted: January 18, 2017 Decided: January 20, 2017
Before GREGORY, Chief Judge, and WILKINSON and DUNCAN, Circuit
Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Christian M. Capece, Federal Public Defender, Jonathan D. Byrne,
Research and Writing Specialist, Ann Mason Rigby, Assistant
Federal Public Defender, Charleston, West Virginia, for
Appellant. Carol A. Casto, United States Attorney, Joseph F.
Adams, Assistant United States Attorney, Huntington, West
Virginia, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Steve Dantay Washington appeals the district court’s
judgment order revoking his supervised release and sentencing
him to 12 months in prison. On appeal, Washington claims that
his within-Policy Statement range sentence is plainly
unreasonable. We affirm.
We have routinely recognized that, in the context of a
supervised release revocation, “the sentencing court retains
broad discretion to impose a term of imprisonment up to the
statutory maximum.” United States v. Padgett, 788 F.3d 370, 373
(4th Cir.) (ellipsis and internal quotation marks omitted),
cert. denied, 136 S. Ct. 494 (2015). “We will not disturb a
district court’s revocation sentence unless it falls outside the
statutory maximum or is otherwise plainly unreasonable.” Id.(internal quotation marks omitted). In reviewing a revocation
sentence, we utilize the familiar procedural and substantive
considerations employed for evaluating the reasonableness of an
original criminal sentence, but “we strike a more deferential
appellate posture than we do when reviewing original sentences.”
Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).
A revocation sentence is procedurally reasonable if the
district court considered the advisory Policy Statement range
and the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) (2012) factors applicable to
supervised release revocation. Id.; United States v. Crudup,
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461 F.3d 433, 438–40 (4th Cir. 2006). A sentence is
substantively reasonable if the district court “sufficiently
stated a proper basis” for the selected sentence, up to the
statutory maximum. Crudup, 461 F.3d at 440. Only if we
determine that a revocation sentence is unreasonable need we
consider “whether it is plainly so.” Padgett, 788 F.3d at 373.
In exercising its sentencing discretion, “the [district]
court should sanction primarily the defendant’s breach of trust,
while taking into account, to a limited degree, the seriousness
of the underlying violation and the criminal history of the
violator.” United States v. Webb, 738 F.3d 638, 641 (4th Cir.
2013) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Washington contends that the revocation sentence imposed by
the district court is unduly punitive and fails to promote the
supervised release goal of easing his transition back into
society. He points to his successful employment on supervised
release and the fact that, in comparison to his original crimes
of conviction, his supervised release violations, which involved
termination from a halfway house for repeated rules violations,
were relatively minor. He argues that a shorter prison term
would have properly punished his breach of trust while
recognizing his progress towards rehabilitation.
The supervised release violations that resulted in the
current revocation were not Washington’s first. As defense
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counsel acknowledges, Washington’s earlier violations previously
resulted in his supervised release being both modified and
revoked. Despite that history, when Washington violated the
terms of his supervised release by being ejected from a halfway
house after repeatedly breaking rules, the district court did
not immediately revoke his supervised release, but instead gave
Washington a second chance by allowing him to return to the
halfway house. Only when Washington was kicked out a second
time did the court punish this breach of trust by revoking his
supervised release and imposing a 12-month within-Policy
Statement Range term of imprisonment. On this record, we uphold
the reasonableness of the selected revocation sentence. See
Crudup, 461 F.3d at 440 (holding that imposition of statutory
maximum term of imprisonment was substantively reasonable, given
that the district court expressly relied on defendant’s
“admitted pattern of violating numerous conditions of his
supervised release,” despite several extensions of leniency by
the district court).
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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