United States v. Anthony Moore

22 F.4th 1258
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
DecidedJanuary 13, 2022
Docket20-11216
StatusPublished
Cited by44 cases

This text of 22 F.4th 1258 (United States v. Anthony Moore) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Anthony Moore, 22 F.4th 1258 (11th Cir. 2022).

Opinion

USCA11 Case: 20-11215 Date Filed: 01/13/2022 Page: 1 of 57

[PUBLISH] In the United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit

____________________

No. 20-11215 ____________________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, versus ANTHONY MOORE,

Defendant-Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida D.C. Docket No. 8:07-cr-00090-JDW-TGW-1 ____________________ USCA11 Case: 20-11215 Date Filed: 01/13/2022 Page: 2 of 57

2 Opinion of the Court 20-11215, 20-11216

No. 20-11216 ____________________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, versus ANTHONY MOORE,

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida D.C. Docket No. 8:07-cr-00090-JDW-TGW-1 ____________________

Before NEWSOM, BRANCH, and LAGOA, Circuit Judges. BRANCH, Circuit Judge: Upon the third revocation of his supervised release, An- thony Moore was sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment and an additional 18 months’ supervised release. During the revocation proceedings, he was also sentenced to a consecutive term of 6 USCA11 Case: 20-11215 Date Filed: 01/13/2022 Page: 3 of 57

20-11215, 20-11216 Opinion of the Court 3

months’ imprisonment for criminal contempt. On appeal, Moore raises five challenges to his contempt conviction and his revocation and contempt sentences. First, he argues that the district court plainly erred in imposing an additional term of supervised release because it failed to account for the terms of imprisonment that were imposed upon the prior revocations of his supervised release. Second, he argues that 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)—the statute under which he was sentenced upon revocation—is unconstitutional be- cause it allows the district court to extend Moore’s sentence be- yond the authorized statutory maximum for his offense of convic- tion based solely on “judge-found facts” in violation of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments as set forth in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000), and Alleyne v. United States, 570 U.S. 99 (2013). 1 Third, he argues that his revocation sentence is substantively unreasona- ble. Fourth, he argues that the district court plainly erred in con- victing him of criminal contempt without giving him an oppor- tunity to allocute. Fifth, he argues that we should exercise our “in- herent supervisory authority” to modify the contempt sentence. Although the district court plainly erred in imposing an 18-month term of supervised release for Moore’s third revocation, § 3583(e)(3) is not unconstitutional as applied to Moore, and the

1 In the alternative, Moore argues that any constitutional concerns can be avoided by reading the text of § 3583(e)(3) as imposing an aggregate limitation on post-revocation imprisonment that caps the total sentence a defendant may serve for revocations and his original sentence at the statutory maximum term authorized for the underlying offense. USCA11 Case: 20-11215 Date Filed: 01/13/2022 Page: 4 of 57

4 Opinion of the Court 20-11215, 20-11216

district court did not impose a substantively unreasonable sen- tence. As to Moore’s contempt sentence, the district court did not plainly err in convicting Moore of criminal contempt without giv- ing him an opportunity to allocute, and we decline his request for us to modify the contempt sentence. Accordingly, with the benefit of oral argument, we affirm in part and vacate in part Moore’s con- tempt conviction and sentences. I. Background In 2007, Moore was convicted of possession of several un- registered destructive devices in violation of 26 U.S.C. §§ 5841, 5861(d), and 5871. He was sentenced to the statutory maximum for his offense—120 months’ imprisonment to be followed by 36 months’ supervised release. He completed his term of imprison- ment in 2016 and began serving the term of supervised release. Since then, his supervised release has been revoked three times. In October 2017, after finding Moore guilty of two violations of the terms of his supervised release, the district court revoked Moore’s supervised release and sentenced him to 6 months’ impris- onment and 24 months’ supervised release. 2 In December 2018, the district court revoked Moore’s supervised release again due to a new violation and sentenced him to 18 months’ imprisonment and 18 months’ supervised release. Finally, in March 2020, the dis- trict court revoked Moore’s supervised release a third time due to

2Moore appealed the first revocation, and we affirmed the revocation and his sentence. See United States v. Moore, 716 F. App’x 934 (11th Cir. 2018). USCA11 Case: 20-11215 Date Filed: 01/13/2022 Page: 5 of 57

20-11215, 20-11216 Opinion of the Court 5

several new violations, and sentenced him to 18 months’ imprison- ment and 18 months’ supervised release. The district court also sentenced him to a consecutive six-month term of imprisonment for criminal contempt for his conduct during the third revocation hearing. The facts underlying the third revocation are as follows. In early 2020, Moore was charged with eight violations of the terms of his supervised release, most of which related to drug or alcohol use. The third of the eight violations charged was for failure to notify probation within 72 hours of being questioned by the police. On January 7, 2020, Moore had been questioned by the Tampa Police Department about excessive use of alcohol. Accord- ing to the police report, Moore was drinking with his work crew supervisor Steven Stearns and another individual on Stearns’s boat. Moore drank excessively and later fell asleep on the couch in Stearns’s living room. The next morning, Stearns’s 5-year-old daughter told Stearns that Moore had “lifted her skirt and at- tempted to touch her inappropriately.” Stearns went into his living room, punched Moore in the face twice, and called the police. When the police arrived, they found Moore lying on the ground intoxicated. The officers interviewed Stearns’s daughter, who con- firmed the details of the incident. The police declined to arrest Moore at that time. At the revocation hearing, Moore admitted to all the alleged violations of the terms of his supervised release except the third violation—the failure to notify probation within 72 hours of being USCA11 Case: 20-11215 Date Filed: 01/13/2022 Page: 6 of 57

6 Opinion of the Court 20-11215, 20-11216

questioned by the police. Moore explained that he did not remem- ber seeing the police or being questioned but stated that he was willing to admit to it. The government called Stearns as a witness to testify about whether Moore was questioned by law enforce- ment. The district court asked Stearns whether the police tried to question Moore and Stearns responded that “they tried to,” but Moore “scream[ed] out that he ain’t talking to them.” After the district court confirmed with Moore’s probation officer that Moore had failed to notify probation within 72 hours of the incident, it found Moore guilty of all eight violations and revoked his super- vised release. The district court then turned to the question of Moore’s sentence. The maximum sentence the district court could impose was 24 months’ imprisonment, under 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e), 3 and the district court calculated Moore’s guidelines range to be an “8- to

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
22 F.4th 1258, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-anthony-moore-ca11-2022.