United States v. Michael Johnson, Jr. , 573 F. App'x 260 ( 2014 )

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 13-4932
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
MICHAEL RAY JOHNSON, JR.,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle
District of North Carolina, at Greensboro. Thomas D. Schroeder,
District Judge. (1:08-cr-00400-TDS-1)
Submitted: May 20, 2014 Decided: May 29, 2014
Before NIEMEYER, KING, and DUNCAN, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Mark E. Edwards, EDWARDS & TRENKLE, PLLC, Durham, North
Carolina, for Appellant. Ripley Rand, United States Attorney,
Michael A. DeFranco, Assistant United States Attorney,
Greensboro, North Carolina, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Michael Ray Johnson, Jr., appeals the district court’s
judgment revoking his supervised release and imposing a twenty-
four-month prison term. Johnson challenges this sentence,
arguing that it is substantively unreasonable. We affirm.
A district court has broad discretion to impose a
sentence upon revoking a defendant’s supervised release. United
States v. Thompson, 595 F.3d 544, 547 (4th Cir. 2010). We will
affirm a sentence imposed after revocation of supervised release
if it is within the applicable statutory maximum and not
“plainly unreasonable.” United States v. Crudup, 461 F.3d 433,
437, 439-40 (4th Cir. 2006). In determining whether a
revocation sentence is plainly unreasonable, we first assess the
sentence for unreasonableness, “follow[ing] generally the
procedural and substantive considerations that we employ in our
review of original sentences.” Id. at 438.
A supervised release revocation sentence is
procedurally reasonable if the district court considered the
Sentencing Guidelines’ Chapter 7 advisory policy statements and
the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) (2012) factors it is permitted to
consider in a supervised release revocation case. 18 U.S.C.
§ 3583(e) (2012); Crudup, 461 F.3d at 439. Such a sentence is
substantively reasonable if the district court stated a proper
basis for concluding the defendant should receive the sentence
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imposed, up to the statutory maximum. Crudup, 461 F.3d at 440.
Only if a sentence is found procedurally or substantively
unreasonable will we “then decide whether the sentence is
plainly unreasonable.” Id. at 439. A sentence is plainly
unreasonable if it is clearly or obviously unreasonable. Id.
In this case, Johnson was sentenced to the applicable
statutory maximum sentence of two years of imprisonment, see 18
U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3) (2012), and Johnson does not assert that the
district court committed any procedural errors. Rather, he
claims that his sentence is substantively unreasonable because
it is “greater than necessary,” 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) (2012), to
achieve the purposes of sentencing.
Upon review of the parties’ briefs and the record, we
conclude that the twenty-four-month prison sentence, which
represents an upward variance from the advisory policy statement
range of eight to fourteen months of imprisonment, is not
substantively unreasonable. When a district court has imposed a
variant sentence, we consider the reasonableness of imposing a
variance and the extent of the variance. United States v.
Tucker, 473 F.3d 556, 561 (4th Cir. 2007). “Generally, if the
reasons justifying the variance are tied to § 3553(a) and are
plausible, the sentence will be deemed reasonable.” Id.
(internal quotation marks and citation omitted). We conclude
that the district court adequately explained its sentence and
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appropriately relied on the relevant § 3553(a) factors in
imposing the upward variance sentence, and that the twenty-four-
month sentence is reasonable.
We therefore 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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