United States v. Gosnell ( 1999 )

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v. No. 98-7366
DOUGLAS L. GOSNELL, JR.,
Defendant-Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Virginia, at Alexandria.
Albert V. Bryan, Jr., Senior District Judge.
(CR-94-382-A)
Submitted: January 26, 1999
Decided: March 22, 1999
Before WILKINS and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges, and
PHILLIPS, Senior Circuit Judge.
_________________________________________________________________
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
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COUNSEL
Douglas L. Gosnell, Jr., Appellant Pro Se. Robert William Wiecher-
ing, Assistant United States Attorney, Alexandria, Virginia, for
Appellant.
_________________________________________________________________
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit. See
Local Rule 36(c).
OPINION
PER CURIAM:
Douglas Gosnell appeals from a district court order dismissing his
petition for modification of the terms of his supervised release. In his
petition, Gosnell argued that, in determining his sentence pursuant to
his conviction for bank fraud, the district court erred in calculating the
loss to his victims, thereby tainting his sentence and the court's resti-
tution order. The district court found Gosnell's petition to be moot in
light of Gosnell's completion of his term of supervised release.
We need not decide whether the district court correctly found Gos-
nell's petition to be moot, for we may affirm the district court on
alternative grounds supported by the record. See Brewster of Lynch-
burg, Inc. v. Dial Corp., 33 F.3d 355, 361 n.3 (4th Cir. 1994). Our
review of the record reveals that Gosnell's petition essentially recasts
the same challenges he made to his sentence in a prior petition
rejected by the district court and affirmed by this court in 1998. See
United States v. Gosnell, No. 97-4384 (4th Cir. April 28, 1998)
(unpublished). Further challenges in the same vein to Gosnell's sen-
tence are foreclosed under the law of the case doctrine. See Sejman
v. Warner-Lambert Co., 845 F.2d 66, 69 (4th Cir. 1988).
Accordingly, the district court's order dismissing Gosnell's petition
is affirmed. We dispense with oral argument because the facts and
legal contentions are adequately presented in the materials before the
court and argument would not aid the decisional process.
AFFIRMED
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