United States v. Phillips , 328 F. App'x 227 ( 2009 )

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 08-4976
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
ANTHONY LEE PHILLIPS,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern
District of West Virginia, at Huntington. Robert C. Chambers,
District Judge. (3:04-cr-00083-4)
Submitted: June 4, 2009 Decided: June 30, 2009
Before MICHAEL, KING, and DUNCAN, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Mary Lou Newberger, Federal Public Defender, Jonathan D. Byrne,
Appellate Counsel, Christian M. Capece, Assistant Federal Public
Defender, Charleston, West Virginia, for Appellant. Charles T.
Miller, United States Attorney, R. Gregory McVey, Assistant
United States Attorney, Huntington, West Virginia, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Anthony Lee Phillips appeals the district court’s
order revoking his supervised release and sentencing him to
twelve months of imprisonment to be followed by twenty-four
months of supervised release. Phillips argues that his sentence
is plainly unreasonable because it does not further the purposes
of supervised release. We affirm.
This court will affirm a sentence imposed after
revocation of supervised release if it is within the applicable
statutory maximum and is not plainly unreasonable. United
States v. Crudup, 461 F.3d 433, 437, 439-40 (4th Cir. 2006). We
first assess the sentence for reasonableness, “follow[ing]
generally the procedural and substantive considerations that we
employ in our review of original sentences, . . . with some
necessary modifications to take into account the unique nature
of supervised release revocation sentences.” Id. at 438-39; see
United States v. Finley, 531 F.3d 288, 294 (4th Cir. 2008) (“In
applying the ‘plainly unreasonable’ standard, we first
determine, using the instructions given in Gall [v. United
States, 552 U.S. 38, __, 128 S. Ct. 586, 597 (2007)], whether a
sentence is ‘unreasonable.’”).
Only if a sentence is found procedurally or
substantively unreasonable will we “decide whether the sentence
is plainly unreasonable.” Crudup, 461 F.3d at 439; see Finley,
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531 F.3d at 294. Although the district court must consider the
Chapter 7 policy statements and the requirements of 18 U.S.C.A.
§§ 3553(a), 3583 (West 2000 & Supp. 2009), “the [district] court
ultimately has broad discretion to revoke its previous sentence
and impose a term of imprisonment up to the statutory maximum.”
Crudup, 461 F.3d at 439 (internal quotation marks and citations
omitted).
Phillips does not challenge the procedural aspects of
his sentence. Rather, he argues that the district court’s
sentence is plainly unreasonable because it fails to further the
purposes of supervised release to assist his transition back
into the community, and that the district court unreasonably
focused on the twelve-month reduction he received under 18
U.S.C. § 3582(c) (2006) in determining the sentence on
revocation. “In determining the reasonableness of a sentence,
we ‘give due deference to the district court’s decision.’”
Finley, 531 F.3d at 297 (quoting Gall, 552 U.S. at __, 128 S.
Ct. at 597). Our review of the record leads us to conclude that
the sentence is not unreasonable.
Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s order. 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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