United States v. Nahson Suggs ( 2022 )

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 20-4032
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff − Appellee,
v.
NAHSON JAHKEEM SUGGS, a/k/a Nas,
Defendant – Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, at
Greenville. Terrence W. Boyle, District Judge. (4:18−cr−00078−BO−2)
Argued: September 24, 2021 Decided: February 2, 2022
Before DIAZ and RICHARDSON, Circuit Judges, and FLOYD, Senior Circuit Judge.
Affirmed by unpublished opinion. Judge Diaz wrote the opinion, in which Judge
Richardson joined, and in which Senior Judge Floyd joined in part. Senior Judge Floyd
wrote an opinion dissenting in part.
ARGUED: James B. Craven, III, Durham, North Carolina, for Appellant. Lucy Partain
Brown, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Raleigh, North Carolina, for
Appellee. ON BRIEF: Robert J. Higdon, Jr., United States Attorney, Jennifer P. May-
Parker, Assistant United States Attorney, David A. Bragdon, Assistant United States
Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Raleigh, North Carolina,
for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
2
DIAZ, Circuit Judge:
Nahson Suggs pleaded guilty to eight counts of drug trafficking and one count of
possessing a firearm in furtherance of a drug-trafficking crime. The district court sentenced
him to concurrent 63-month terms of imprisonment on the drug counts and a consecutive
60-month term on the firearm count. On appeal, defense counsel filed an Anders brief,
questioning the reasonableness of the sentence and the denial of Suggs’s objections to the
presentence report. We directed merits briefing on two issues: (1) whether the court erred
by failing to ask if Suggs agreed to the factual basis proffered by the government at his
plea colloquy, and (2) whether the court failed to adequately explain its chosen sentence.
We affirm.
I.
Suggs’s convictions stem from an undercover investigation conducted by the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The investigation revealed that
Suggs, along with two coconspirators, led a gang that trafficked drugs and guns.
Throughout the investigation, Suggs brokered at least 15 sales of heroin, fentanyl, or guns.
He made one such drug sale in front of a small child. In all, law enforcement found Suggs
personally responsible for distributing over 180 grams of heroin, 15 grams of a heroin-
fentanyl mixture, and 10 guns.
A grand jury indicted Suggs on nine counts: conspiracy to distribute and possess
with intent to distribute heroin, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 846; six counts of
distributing heroin, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1); distributing heroin and fentanyl,
3
in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1); and possessing a firearm in furtherance of a drug-
trafficking crime, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c). 1
At the plea hearing, the district court found Suggs competent and explained the
charges against him, their maximum penalties, and the rights Suggs would be relinquishing
by pleading guilty. Having acknowledged the court’s statements, Suggs pleaded guilty to
all nine counts without a plea agreement. The government then presented the factual basis
for the charges. And though Suggs hadn’t stipulated to the facts, he didn’t dispute them.
The court then, without consulting Suggs or his counsel, found that the plea was voluntary
and that a factual basis existed for Suggs’s guilty plea.
Suggs’s presentence report grouped the drug counts and calculated a total offense
level of 26. It first computed a base offense level of 24 from the drug quantities. The
report then applied a three-level increase for Suggs’s role as a manager in the offense and
a two-level increase for his knowing involvement of a minor. It also applied a three-level
reduction for acceptance of responsibility. Coupled with his criminal history category of
I, Suggs’s Guidelines range on the drug counts was 63 to 78 months in prison. For the gun
charge, the Guidelines sentence was the statutory minimum of 60 months, consecutive to
any other counts. Suggs objected to the report’s drug-weight calculation and both
sentencing enhancements.
1
Four of Suggs’s counts for distributing heroin also charged aiding-and-abetting
liability in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2.
4
At sentencing, Suggs took responsibility for his actions. Suggs’s counsel then
reiterated his objections to the presentence report, arguing that a Guidelines range of 24 to
30 months should apply to the grouped drug charges. In response, the government called
a detective who investigated Suggs’s crimes. This detective corroborated Suggs’s
leadership role in the conspiracy, recruitment of Suggs’s then 17-year-old brother for the
drug sales, and distribution of the drug quantities described in the presentence report.
Suggs presented no witnesses in rebuttal. The court overruled Suggs’s objections.
Suggs’s counsel then requested a downward variance from the 63- to 78-month
Guidelines range on the drug charges. He explained Suggs was a young man with no prior
felony convictions and “a lot of support in the community.” J.A. 56. And because this
would be Suggs’s first stint in prison, counsel argued that a 24-month sentence on the drug
charges, when combined with the consecutive 60-month term on the gun charge, would be
adequate deterrence.
In response, the government emphasized Suggs’s personal role in at least 15
different drug or gun transactions. It also noted that a small child was present during one
of the heroin deals at Suggs’s home. To close, the government discussed Suggs’s
involvement with local street gangs and asserted there had been a noticeable drop in violent
crime in the area following the arrest of Suggs and his coconspirators.
After hearing the evidence—and criticizing some errors in the presentence report—
the district court held that “under [18 U.S.C. §] 3553(a) the Government has satisfied their
burden of proof and a sentence within the guideline at the low end is appropriate in this
5
case.” J.A. 59. The court sentenced Suggs to concurrent 63-month prison terms on the
drug counts and a consecutive 60-month term on the gun count.
Suggs timely appealed. His counsel filed a brief under Anders v. California, 386
U.S. 738 (1967), questioning the reasonableness of the sentence and the denial of Suggs’s
objections to the presentence report but finding no meritorious grounds for appeal. In
accordance with Anders, we reviewed the record and directed the parties to brief the issues
now before us.
II.
A.
We first address Suggs’s plea proceeding. Suggs didn’t challenge the district court’s
acceptance of the proffered factual basis at his plea colloquy, nor did he move to withdraw
his guilty plea. As a result, we review the adequacy of his plea proceeding for plain error.
United States v. Lockhart, 947 F.3d 187, 191 (4th Cir. 2020) (en banc).
To satisfy the plain-error standard, Suggs must show: (1) an error was made; (2) the
error is plain; and (3) the error affected his substantial rights. United States v. Massenburg,
564 F.3d 337, 342–43 (4th Cir. 2009). In the guilty-plea context, Suggs can prove that an
error affected his substantial rights if he shows “a reasonable probability that, but for the
error, he would not have pleaded guilty.” United States v. Sanya, 774 F.3d 812, 816 (4th
Cir. 2014) (cleaned up). We will exercise our discretion to correct such an error only if it
“seriously affects the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings.”
Lockhart, 947 F.3d at 191 (cleaned up).
6
Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11 requires district courts to determine that
there’s a factual basis for a guilty plea before entering judgment. Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(b)(3).
“The requirement . . . is designed to protect a defendant who is in the position of pleading
voluntarily with an understanding of the nature of the charge but without realizing that his
conduct does not actually fall within the charge.” United States v. Mastrapa, 509 F.3d 652,
660 (4th Cir. 2007) (cleaned up).
Here, the district court heard a detailed proffer from the government and adopted
this factual basis for the plea without affording Suggs a chance to agree, much less respond.
This is troubling considering Suggs pleaded guilty with no plea agreement or stipulated
statement of facts. And there’s little else in the record to assure us the court made clear
Suggs knew exactly what he admitted to when the court accepted the government’s proffer.
But even if we assume the first two elements of the plain-error standard are met,
Suggs has failed to show a reasonable probability that, but for the district court’s failure to
question him about the factual proffer, he wouldn’t have pleaded guilty. To the contrary,
Suggs concedes that, if the district court had questioned him about the proffer, he “would
likely have agreed to it.” Appellant’s Supp. Br. at 4. Even now, he assures us he’s “not
seeking to withdraw the guilty plea.” Reply Br. at 1. What’s more, the presentence report
described the factual basis offered by the government at the plea hearing. Suggs had a
chance to object to those facts (and did object to some) before his sentencing. On this
record, Suggs can’t show that any error during his plea proceeding affected his substantial
rights.
7
B.
Suggs next challenges his sentence as procedurally unreasonable because the district
court failed to adequately explain its low-end Guidelines sentence.
We review a district court’s sentence “under a deferential abuse-of-discretion
standard.” Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 41 (2007). In reviewing for procedural
reasonableness, we “ensure that the district court committed no significant procedural
error, such as failing to calculate (or improperly calculating) the Guidelines range, treating
the Guidelines as mandatory, failing to consider the § 3553(a) factors, selecting a sentence
based on clearly erroneous facts, or failing to adequately explain the chosen sentence.” Id.
at 51.
A sentencing judge “should set forth enough to satisfy the appellate court that he
has considered the parties’ arguments and has a reasoned basis for exercising his own legal
decisionmaking authority.” Rita v. United States, 551 U.S. 338, 356 (2007). Of course,
the “appropriateness of brevity or length, conciseness or detail, when to write, what to say,
depends upon circumstances.” Id. For this reason, “[w]hen a judge applies a sentence
within the Guidelines range, he or she often does not need to provide a lengthy
explanation.” Chavez-Meza v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 1959, 1964 (2018). It can be
sufficient for a judge to simply rely on the record, while making clear that he or she has
considered the parties’ arguments and accounted for the § 3553(a) factors. See id. at 1965.
In this case, Suggs argued for a downward variance, requesting a 24-month sentence
on the drug charges rather than one in the 63- to 78-month Guidelines range. The
government responded, reasserting the propriety of a Guidelines sentence. Despite having
8
these competing contentions before it, the court’s ruling was terse. There’s no doubt the
court could have provided a more robust explanation for its Guidelines sentence. But the
question before us is whether a longer explanation was required here. We conclude it was
not.
Though Suggs advanced a few mitigation arguments, they weren’t so complex as to
require a detailed explanation. Counsel argued Suggs was a young man with no felonies
and an otherwise clean criminal record. He also stressed Suggs’s considerable community
support. On this basis, counsel suggested that a variant sentence on the drug counts more
than 50 percent below the low-end of the Guidelines range would have provided adequate
deterrence. While nonfrivolous, these arguments are “conceptually simple,” such that the
law didn’t require the district court to say much when “the record makes clear [it]
considered the evidence and arguments.” Rita, 551 U.S. at 359. The court’s explanation
here meets this low bar, though barely. 2
After hearing argument on Suggs’s requested variance, the district court found that
“under 3553(a) the Government ha[d] satisfied their burden of proof and a sentence within
2
While we have great respect for the work of our district court colleagues (and are
loath to criticize them), this is not the first time we’ve addressed this district court’s
truncated sentencing practices. See, e.g., United States v. Lymas, 781 F.3d 106, 113–14
(4th Cir. 2015); United States v. Carter, 564 F.3d 325, 329–30 (4th Cir. 2009); United
States v. Pratt, 796 F. App’x 181, 182–83 (4th Cir. 2020) (per curiam); United States v.
Hines, 796 F. App’x 803, 806–07 (4th Cir. 2019) (per curiam); United States v. Johnson,
694 F. App’x 192, 193 (4th Cir. 2017) (per curiam); United States v. Gaskill, 318 F. App’x
251, 259 (4th Cir. 2009) (per curiam). In each of these cases, we vacated and remanded
for resentencing because of the court’s failure to adequately explain its chosen sentence.
While we find that remedy inappropriate here, we urge our colleagues to do more than the
bare minimum when exercising their sentencing power.
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the guideline at the low-end is appropriate in this case.” J.A. 59. The court thus
incorporated the § 3553(a) factors into its decision and signaled that it had rejected Suggs’s
contentions on these factors in favor of the government’s. To be sure, the government has
no “burden” under § 3553(a), but the import of the court’s inartful language is sufficiently
clear. After all, the court then immediately imposed a 63-month Guidelines sentence on
the drug charges, as the government requested. This sentence was a far cry from Suggs’s
requested 24 months.
Moreover, that the district court adopted the government’s position is significant
because the government directly addressed Suggs’s mitigation arguments. Cf. United
States v. Torres-Reyes, 952 F.3d 147, 153 (4th Cir. 2020) (finding a sentence inadequately
explained despite the government addressing the mitigation arguments because “the court
did not adopt or convey the weight it placed on [the government’s] arguments”). 3 In
response to Suggs’s “clean” criminal history, the government explained this wasn’t one
bad decision—he participated in over 15 felony drug or gun transactions. As for his
community support, the government highlighted both the presence of a small child in one
of Suggs’s heroin deals and the crime reduction in his community since his arrest. We find
3
In criticizing our reliance on Torres-Reyes, see Dissenting Op. at 15–16, our friend
in the dissent goes beyond what that case requires. There, we found the district court failed
to “describe the circumstances or characteristics present” that would outweigh the
defendant’s mitigation arguments. Torres-Reyes, 952 F.3d at 153. Although the
government had addressed the defendant’s arguments, the district court failed to either
“adopt or convey the weight it placed on those arguments.” Id. (emphasis added). That
the district court here didn’t specifically convey the weight it gave the government’s
arguments is of no moment for we find the record shows it adopted those arguments
wholesale.
10
that “the context of [Suggs’s] sentence makes it patently obvious that the district court
found [his] arguments to be unpersuasive.” United States v. Blue, 877 F.3d 513, 521 (4th
Cir. 2017) (cleaned up).
Our dissenting colleague suggests that we’ve improperly employed the sentencing
hearing’s context as a “surrogate” for the district court’s required statement of reasons.
Dissenting Op. at 16–17. Our friend says that context can usually reveal only that a court
considered a defendant’s arguments, not its reasons for dismissing them. With this much,
we agree. But a court’s adoption (however brief) of the government’s position is not the
usual course of things.
There’s no gainsaying that a sentencing court’s separate consideration of and
explanation for dismissing a defendant’s mitigation arguments is the better practice. But
our cases—contrary to the dissent’s view, see Dissenting Op. at 15—permit a court to
consider a defendant’s arguments and reject them through adoption of the government’s
responsive arguments. See, e.g., Torres-Reyes, 952 F.3d at 153; United States v. Quiller,
494 F. App’x 308, 311 (4th Cir. 2012) (per curiam) (“We have reviewed the sentencing
transcript and the district court’s statement of reasons and conclude that the court
considered the arguments raised by the parties and adopted the Government’s position as
acceptable. In so doing, the court acknowledged its inclination to sentence Quiller to the
high end of the Guidelines and yet sentenced Quiller to the middle of the sentencing range,
consistent with the Government’s request.”); United States v. Jones, 417 F. App’x 337, 339
(4th Cir. 2011) (per curiam) (“After review of the record, we are satisfied that the court
adequately explained its rejection of Jones’ argument when it adopted the government’s
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position[.]”). This sequence of events will often implicate a hearing’s context, and that’s
what happened here.
The district court’s actions throughout sentencing further persuade us that it engaged
with and considered the parties’ arguments and the relevant facts. See United States v.
Montes-Pineda, 445 F.3d 375, 381 (4th Cir. 2006) (“This is not a case where the district
court passively heard the parties’ arguments and then seemed to ignore them.”). At the
beginning of the proceeding, the court gave Suggs a chance to speak and thanked him for
his allocution. When the government presented a witness, the court had questions of its
own to “set the stage.” J.A. 50. And at a few points, the court identified errors it found in
the presentence report. In short, the record shows that the district court made an
individualized assessment of the chosen sentence based on the particular facts and
arguments before it. See Blue, 877 F.3d at 518.
Finally, Suggs insists that United States v. Provance, 944 F.3d 213 (4th Cir. 2019),
mandates resentencing. In Provance, we vacated a below-Guidelines sentence as
procedurally unreasonable where “there was no explanation at all.” Id. at 219. The district
court there deviated from the Guidelines range of 33 to 41 months’ imprisonment to instead
impose a sentence of probation. See id. at 216–17. But in doing so, it failed to mention
the § 3553(a) factors or provide any other basis to infer its rationale for rejecting the
government’s arguments for a Guidelines sentence. See id. at 219.
Provance is of no help to Suggs. For starters, the district court here (unlike in
Provance) imposed a Guidelines sentence. This sentence thus requires less explanation
than one that deviates from the Guidelines. See Chavez-Meza, 138 S. Ct. at 1964. And, as
12
discussed, the court’s explanation, while limited, gives us a sufficient basis to conclude
that it considered the § 3553(a) factors and weighed the merits of Suggs’s mitigation
arguments. That the court found a Guidelines sentence appropriate under the particularized
facts of Suggs’s case is also borne out by the context and record of the sentencing hearing.
III.
For the reasons given, the district court’s judgment is
AFFIRMED.
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FLOYD, Senior Circuit Judge, concurring in part and dissenting in part:
The Court holds today that a sentencing judge provides sufficient explanation when,
without considering a single argument raised in defense, the judge announces “the
Government has satisfied [its] burden of proof” “under 3553(a).” J.A. 59. Because that
holding trivializes beyond recognition the foundational legal principle that a district judge
“should set forth enough to satisfy the appellate court that he has considered the parties’
arguments and has a reasoned basis for exercising his own legal decisionmaking authority,”
Rita v. United States, 551 U.S. 338, 356 (2007), I respectfully dissent from Part II.B of the
majority opinion. I concur with the remaining Parts of the opinion.
The majority begins with Rita’s remark that rejecting “conceptually simple”
arguments does not always require “a detailed explanation.” Majority Op. 9 (quoting 551
U.S. at 359). * Extending that proposition, the majority now holds that in some
circumstances, the analysis is so simple that a district court may implicitly incorporate the
*
The majority similarly relies on Chavez-Meza’s proposition that the district court
“does not need to provide a lengthy explanation” for sentences within the Guidelines range.
Chavez-Meza v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 1959, 1964 (2018). But Chavez-Meza also
cautioned, just one page before, that “[i]f the sentence is within the Guidelines range, and
the Guidelines range exceeds 24 months, the judge must also state ‘the reason for imposing
a sentence at a particular point within the range.’” Id. at 1963 (quoting 18 U.S.C.
§ 3553(c)(1)). And it affirmed the district court’s resentencing only after verifying that the
judge had previously explained, at the original sentencing, that the “reason the guideline
sentence is high in this case . . . is because of the drug quantity”—“from what he gathered
and what he had seen, methamphetamine, it destroys individual lives, it destroys families,
it can destroy communities.” Id. at 1966–67 (brackets omitted). That explanation offered
insight into the district court’s judgment and an opportunity to contest it by, for example,
arguing the district judge inappropriately relied on his own experience rather than the
record. The majority can point to no comparable explanation—and thus no comparable
opportunity—here.
14
government’s objections into its sentencing, “signal[ing]” that it supports the government’s
position, id. at 10—without offering any reasons of its own. But the majority cites no
authority for that further step. Quite the contrary: Rita holds a “statement of reasons”
“important” “[i]n the [sentencing] context.” 551 U.S. at 356. It allows for “normal
appellate” review of potential substantive mistakes, id. at 354, and promotes the legitimacy
of the sentencing system, id. at 367 (Ginsburg, J., concurring). And where, as here, a
defendant actually “contests the Guidelines sentence,” Rita expressly directs the trial court
to say “more”—to address the “nonfrivolous reasons for imposing a different sentence.”
Id. at 357. Even if we could sanction the district court’s tacit incorporation of a certain
specific proposition advanced by the prosecution, we certainly cannot do so wholesale.
Take the district court’s broad statement here, that “the Government ha[d] satisfied their
burden of proof.” J.A. 59. I fail to see what reasoned principle we can apply to “determine
from this record if the court found some, all, or none” of the government’s contentions
persuasive. United States v. Carter, 564 F.3d 325, 329 (4th Cir. 2009).
The majority cites a case we decided just last year, Torres-Reyes, which held a
sentence procedurally inadequate because the district court neither “describe[d] the
circumstances or characteristics present that, in its opinion, would outweigh the
circumstances that the defendant argued justified a variance” nor “adopt[ed]” the
government’s arguments. United States v. Torres-Reyes, 952 F.3d 147, 153 (4th Cir.
2020). This case, the majority presumably reasons, requires the opposite result because
the district court indeed “adopt[ed]” the government’s contentions below. Id. Yet Torres-
Reyes would still require the court to “convey the weight it placed on [the government’s]
15
arguments.” Id. That the court did not do so here is particularly troubling because all
Suggs’s crimes comprised controlled buys. J.A. 52–53. So the government’s argument
that violence in the community decreased following Suggs’s arrest—as the district court’s
incorporation of that argument—cannot respond to Suggs’s nonfrivolous contentions about
his deep community support and lack of prior criminality. The district court “needed to
separately consider these arguments for a variance.” Torres-Reyes, 952 F.3d at 152.
The majority also insists that a hearing’s “context” can offer a surrogate for an
explicit statement of reasons—at least where the context “makes it patently obvious that
the district court found [the defendant’s] arguments to be unpersuasive.” Majority Op. 10–
11 (quoting United States v. Blue, 877 F.3d 513, 521 (4th Cir. 2017)). That is true where
“the sentence imposed is explicitly tailored to address a defendant’s individual
characteristics, such as requiring substance abuse treatment for defendants who struggle
with drug and alcohol abuse issues.” Blue, 877 F.3d at 521 (citation omitted). Or where
“the sentencing court engages counsel in a discussion about [a specific] argument.” Id.
(citation omitted). The record here manifests neither. The district court (1) thanked Suggs
for his allocution, (2) asked two rudimentary, “set[ting] the stage” questions of the
government, Majority Op. 12, and (3) corrected a typo in the presentence report. None of
those comments engaged with Suggs’s arguments for a downward departure: a clean
criminal history, deep community support, his youth, his inexperience with prison
conditions, and a mandatory consecutive 60-month sentence. Cf. Rita, 551 U.S. at 345(underscoring that the district court “asked questions about each [§ 3553(a)] factor”). If
anything, the context here shows the district court was unwilling to consider Suggs’s
16
defenses. When Suggs’s attorney raised sound objections to the Guidelines calculations,
for example, the court remarked, “You got a lot of objections, don’t you?” J.A. at 43. And
while waiting on a government witness’s testimony, the judge asked the defense, “Do you
really want to educate me about your guy?” Id. at 44. I cannot agree with the majority that
this kind of “engage[ment]” offers confidence “that the district court made an
individualized assessment . . . based on the particular facts and arguments before it.”
Majority Op. 12.
Even more to the point, the hearing’s context usually reveals only that the court
considered a defendant’s arguments, not the court’s reasons for dismissing them. Those
remain two separate requirements. See Carter, 564 F.3d at 328. That is why we were
careful in Blue to cabin our reliance on context only where the sentence on its face responds
to some discrete contention raised during the hearing. See supra p. 16; see also Blue, 877
F.3d at 521 (remanding for resentencing where “the district court did not engage counsel
in a discussion about the merits of [a defendant’s] arguments for a downward departure”
because “simply hear[ing] those arguments” does not make the sentencing decision
“patently obvious” (quoting United States v. Montes-Pineda, 445 F.3d 375, 381 (4th Cir.
2006))). At all other times, we have resolutely declined to “guess at the district court’s
rationale, searching the record for statements by the Government or defense counsel or for
any other clues that might explain a sentence.” Torres-Reyes, 952 F.3d at 151 (quoting
United States v. Ross, 912 F.3d 740, 745 (4th Cir. 2019); Carter, 564 F.3d at 329–30).
Here, the majority offers as proof only that the district court “imposed a 63-month
17
Guidelines sentence on the drug charges, as the government requested.” Majority Op. 10.
That falls far short of Blue.
The majority ends by stressing that within-the-Guidelines sentences require less
explanation. Majority Op. 12 (declining to follow United States v. Provance, 944 F.3d 213(4th Cir. 2019), because the court there “deviated from the Guidelines range”). But less
is not nothing. Rita’s central holding was that “the sentencing court”—unlike its appellate
counterpart—“does not enjoy the benefit of a legal presumption that the Guidelines
sentence should apply.” 551 U.S. at 351 (citation omitted). Requiring trial judges to turn
square corners is what keeps “the rebuttability of the presumption” “real.” See id. at 367(Ginsburg, J., concurring). And absent such adequate explanation, appellate courts will be
forced to presume the Guidelines not just reasonable but binding—exactly what we may
not do after Rita and United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005). What is more, this
Circuit’s precedent already holds as much: “the Supreme Court’s recent sentencing
jurisprudence plainly precludes any presumption that, when imposing a sentence, the
district court has silently adopted arguments presented by a party.” Carter, 564 F.3d at
329 (discussing Rita, 551 U.S. 338; Booker, 543 U.S. 220; Gall v. United States, 552 U.S.
38 (2007)). “[S]entences that fall within the Guidelines range are entitled” only “to a
presumption of substantive reasonableness, we typically do not apply that presumption to
the procedural prong of our reasonableness inquiry.” Blue, 877 F.3d at 519–20 (citations
omitted). To satisfy that prong, the sentencing court must “state the individualized reasons
that justify a sentence, even when sentencing a defendant withing the Guidelines range.”
18
Carter, 564 F.3d at 330 n.2 (citations omitted). After today, that jurisprudence takes on a
previously unsuspected modesty.
I would hold that the district court procedurally erred in failing to address Suggs’s
nonfrivolous arguments for a downward departure and remand for resentencing.
19