United States v. Anthony Vaughn ( 2017 )

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION
File Name: 17a0707n.06
No. 17-1272 FILED
Dec 29, 2017
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS DEBORAH S. HUNT, Clerk
FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, )
) ON APPEAL FROM THE
Plaintiff-Appellee, ) UNITED STATES DISTRICT
) COURT FOR THE WESTERN
v. ) DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN
)
ANTHONY KAREEM VAUGHN, )
) OPINION
Defendant-Appellant. )
Before: CLAY, GIBBONS, and BUSH, Circuit Judges.
JOHN K. BUSH, Circuit Judge. Defendant Anthony Vaughn appeals his above-
guidelines sentence of twenty-four months of imprisonment, which the district court imposed for
various supervised-release violations. Among other things, Vaughn moved from Michigan to
Indiana without permission and then, when found by law-enforcement officers, engaged in a
two-hour standoff with them. We review for abuse of discretion, and we affirm.
I
In 2005, Vaughn was charged in the Southern District of Indiana with possession with
intent to distribute methamphetamine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1). Vaughn pleaded
guilty and was sentenced to seventy-eight months of imprisonment followed by five years of
supervised release. In 2011, Vaughn was released from custody and began his term of
supervised release. Before long, Vaughn had been charged with violating his conditions of
release by possessing marijuana and possessing marijuana with intent to distribute. The district
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court in Indiana revoked Vaughn’s supervised release and sentenced him to eighteen months of
imprisonment, after which Vaughn would continue on supervised release.
In February 2013, Vaughn was approved to transfer his supervision to the Western
District of Michigan. Less than a year later, Vaughn was again charged with violating his
conditions of release, this time for possessing methamphetamine, among other violations. The
district court sentenced Vaughn to only three months in custody, followed by two years of
supervised release (the first three months of which were to be served as home detention), but the
court warned Vaughn that any future revocation of supervised release would likely result in the
imposition of the maximum sentence allowed by statute.
In January 2016, Vaughn went to his probation office to provide proof of his income but,
rather than waiting on the probation officer to make copies of his documents, promptly left
without permission. He then disappeared and stopped all contact with his probation officer. It
was more than a year before law-enforcement officers found Vaughn: he had moved out of
Grand Rapids without permission, he absconded to Indianapolis, and, when Marion County
Sheriff’s deputies located him in a home there, he caused a two-hour standoff that culminated in
the deputies’ sending a K-9 into that home to find him. Vaughn was transported back to Grand
Rapids for his violation-and-revocation hearing.
Vaughn was charged with ten violations of the conditions of his release, three of which
were dismissed. The seven violations for which Vaughn was sentenced were refusal to submit
his cell phone for a search, failure to report for drug testing, failure to notify his probation officer
about contact with law enforcement, failure to provide financial information, failure to follow
instructions, failure to provide notice of change in residence or employment, and leaving the
judicial district without permission. All the violations were “Grade C,” meaning that with
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Vaughn’s criminal-history category of I, the Guidelines punishment range was three to nine
months of imprisonment. See USSG §7B1.4(a). The statutory maximum, meanwhile, was five
years of imprisonment. See 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3). The district court conducted a hearing that
lasted more than an hour, considered carefully the testimony that was presented, and adopted the
probation office’s sentencing recommendation, which was twenty-four months of imprisonment,
with no supervision to follow because, as the court observed, “[i]t hasn’t worked.” Sentencing
Hr’g Tr. 54:16. The district court noted that “probably the single biggest mistake Mr. Vaughn
makes here, or anybody could make on supervision” was that he “just abscond[ed]. . . . That
needs sanction.” Id. 52:16–53:23. Vaughn did not object but did timely file his notice of appeal.
II
Vaughn appeals his sentence as substantively unreasonable. We review sentences
imposed following the revocation of supervised release under the same “deferential abuse-of-
discretion standard” that we apply to sentences imposed following conviction. United States v.
Yancy, 725 F.3d 596, 598 (6th Cir. 2013) (quoting Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 41 (2007));
see United States v. Bolds, 511 F.3d 568, 575 (6th Cir. 2007). “A sentence may be considered
substantively unreasonable when the district court selects the sentence arbitrarily, bases the
sentence on impermissible factors, fails to consider pertinent § 3553(a) factors, or gives an
unreasonable amount of weight to any pertinent factor.” United States v. Brown, 501 F.3d 722,
724 (6th Cir. 2007). Under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), as the district court here recognized, the
sentence imposed must, among other things, be “sufficient, but not greater than necessary . . . , to
reflect the seriousness of the offense, to promote respect for the law, and to provide just
punishment for the offense.” See Sentencing Hr’g Tr. 50:21.
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The record here makes clear that the district court did not impose an arbitrary sentence,
base Vaughn’s sentence on impermissible factors, fail to consider pertinent factors, or
unreasonably weigh any factor. The district court stated, for example, that Vaughn’s conduct
needs sanction simply to promote respect for the law and vindicate the authority
of the law and the general ability that the Court has, not just in Mr. Vaughn’s case
but every case, to have meaningful contact with its supervisees. And that’s what I
can’t fundamentally get beyond here and fundamentally why I think the guideline
range isn’t enough in this case. It doesn’t take into account what really happened
here.
Sentencing Hr’g Tr. 53:23–54:5. And again:
So I do intend revocation and a custodial term of 24 months which I think is
needed here to vindicate the overall respect for the law and for the supervision
process generally.
Id. 55:17–19. Throughout the sentencing hearing, the district court grappled thoughtfully with
the question of Vaughn’s sentence and ultimately decided on a sentence it called “stiff but not as
stiff as it could be.” Id. 54:12–13. The district court imposed a sentence of confinement without
subsequent supervision specifically so that Vaughn, after serving his term of punishment, would
then be “free to make his own life without interference from federal probation or from a federal
court as long as he continues to honor the law and doesn’t break it.” Id. 54:18–21. The record
reflects the district court’s use of discretion, not an abuse of discretion.
Vaughn argues that the twenty-four-month sentence has “no quantifiable relationship to
the § 3553(a) factors, and seemed to be strongly influenced by the district court’s statement three
years earlier that it intended to impose a serious retributive sentence on Mr. Vaughn” if he
violated his terms of release again. Appellant’s Br. 19. But, although a sentencing court must
“ensure that the justification [for an upward variance] is sufficiently compelling to support the
degree of the variance,” Gall, 552 U.S. at 50, the court need not employ rigid mathematical
formulas to derive a sentence. See United States v. Richards, 659 F.3d 527, 550 (6th Cir. 2011);
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contra Appellant’s Br. 16 (“[T]here is no equivalency table suggesting how many Grade C
violations might ‘be equal to’ a Grade A violation.”). A substantial variance, such as the one in
this case, may require substantial justification, but the district court here amply met that
requirement. Further, in part because the district court did not impose the statutory maximum
five-year sentence, Vaughn’s retribution argument fails.
In support of his position, Vaughn points to United States v. Yopp, 453 F.3d 770 (6th
Cir. 2006). In Yopp, we vacated a twenty-four-month sentence for Grade C supervised-release
violations where, as here, the Guidelines range was three to nine months of imprisonment. Id. at
771, 773. But in Yopp, the district court did not even mention the recommended range (or the
policy statements in Chapter Seven of the Guidelines) at the defendant’s revocation hearings, and
our reversal was based on the complete “absence of an articulated basis for [the] twenty-four
month sentence.” Id. at 774. Indeed, the district court’s sentence in Yopp was based solely on
the court’s unfounded belief that “there’s no way” a certain drug-treatment program could have
been completed in less than twenty-four months, when in fact the record revealed that the
program could be completed in a year. Id. at 772, 774.
This case is a far cry from Yopp. The district court here carefully considered the
imposition of an above-guidelines sentence and did not abuse its discretion in making its
sentencing determination.
III
We therefore AFFIRM Vaughn’s sentence.
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