United States v. Tony Alexander ( 2023 )

USCA4 Appeal: 23-4050 Doc: 10 Filed: 07/25/2023 Pg: 1 of 4
UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 23-4050
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
TONY BERNARD ALEXANDER,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, at
Charlotte. Max O. Cogburn, Jr., District Judge. (3:18-cr-00202-MOC-DSC-1)
Submitted: July 20, 2023 Decided: July 25, 2023
Before NIEMEYER and THACKER, Circuit Judges, and KEENAN, Senior Circuit Judge.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Tony B. Alexander, Appellant Pro Se.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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PER CURIAM:
Tony Bernard Alexander appeals the district court’s order revoking his supervised
release and sentencing him to time served and a 12-month term of supervised release. We
affirm.
We review the district court’s decision to revoke supervised release for abuse of
discretion. United States v. Doctor, 958 F.3d 226, 234 (4th Cir. 2020). A district court
need only find a violation of a condition of supervised release by a preponderance of the
evidence. See 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3); United States v. Patterson, 957 F.3d 426, 435
(4th Cir. 2020). “This standard requires only that the existence of a fact be more probable
than its nonexistence.” Doctor, 958 F.3d at 234 (internal quotation marks omitted). We
review for clear error a district court’s factual determinations underlying its conclusion that
a violation of supervised release occurred. Id. When factual findings are based on the
credibility of witnesses, we afford “great deference” to the district court’s determinations.
Id.
At the revocation hearing, the district court found that Alexander willfully violated
the conditions of supervised release when he refused to sign the chain of custody form for
his positive drug test and failed to follow the probation officer’s instructions. In making
this finding, the district court expressly found that the probation officer’s testimony was
more credible than Alexander’s testimony. We discern no clear error in the district court’s
findings and conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in revoking
Alexander’s supervised release. See 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e); U.S. Sentencing Guidelines
Manual § 7B1.3(a)(2), p.s. (2018).
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Turning to Alexander’s revocation sentence, a district court has “broad discretion”
when imposing a sentence on revocation of supervised release. United States v. Webb, 738
F.3d 638, 640 (4th Cir. 2013). We will uphold “a revocation sentence so long as it is within
the prescribed statutory range and is not plainly unreasonable.” United States v. Coston,
964 F.3d 289, 296 (4th Cir. 2020) (internal quotation marks omitted). Alexander’s
sentence does not exceed the applicable statutory maximum. Accordingly, the remaining
question is whether the sentence is plainly unreasonable. We first “determine whether the
sentence is unreasonable at all.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). “In making this
determination, we follow 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.” United
States v. Slappy, 872 F.3d 202, 207 (4th Cir. 2017) (internal quotation marks omitted). “A
revocation sentence is procedurally reasonable if the district court adequately explains the
chosen sentence after considering the Sentencing Guidelines’ nonbinding Chapter Seven
policy statements and the applicable 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factors.” Id. (footnotes omitted);
see 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e).
We conclude that Alexander’s sentence is procedurally reasonable. The district
court properly calculated the 5- to 11-month advisory policy statement range for the
revocation term of imprisonment and correctly determined the 24-month maximum
authorized supervised release term. The court also considered the relevant statutory factors
and explained its rationale for imposing a sentence of time served and for requiring
Alexander to serve a 12-month term of supervised release in light of Alexander’s history
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of noncompliance. Alexander has presented no evidence or argument sufficient to
overcome the presumption of reasonableness afforded to his below-policy-statement-range
prison term, see United States v. Louthian, 756 F.3d 295, 306 (4th Cir. 2014) (providing
standard), and he has not otherwise established that the revocation sentence is plainly
unreasonable.
We therefore affirm the district court’s revocation 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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