United States v. Dotson

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 09-4008
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
STUART DOTSON,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern
District of West Virginia, at Beckley. Thomas E. Johnston,
District Judge. (5:06-cr-00155-1)
Submitted: July 30, 2009 Decided: August 17, 2009
Before WILKINSON, MICHAEL, and SHEDD, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Mary Lou Newberger, Federal Public Defender, Jonathan D. Byrne,
Appellate Counsel, Lex A. Coleman, Assistant Federal Public
Defender, Charleston, West Virginia, for Appellant. Charles T.
Miller, United States Attorney, John L. File, Assistant United
States Attorney, Beckley, West Virginia, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Stuart Dotson appeals the district court’s order
revoking his supervised release and sentencing him to twenty
months of imprisonment. Dotson 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,
531 F.3d at 294. Although the district court must consider the
2
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).
Dotson 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 address the
underlying cause of the violations, fails to further the
purposes of supervised release, and imposes a sentence that is
disproportionate to the violations. “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
3