United States v. Antoine Myles

Opinion

USCA4 Appeal: 21-4420 Doc: 43 Filed: 07/25/2022 Pg: 1 of 3

UNPUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 21-4420

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff - Appellee,

v.

ANTOINE DEWAYNE MYLES, a/k/a Twan,

Defendant - Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, at Raleigh. Richard E. Myers, II, Chief District Judge. (5:15-cr-00172-M-2)

Submitted: July 21, 2022 Decided: July 25, 2022

Before MOTZ, HARRIS, and RUSHING, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.

ON BRIEF: Deborrah L. Newton, NEWTON LAW, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellant. Michael F. Easley, Jr., United States Attorney, David A. Bragdon, Assistant United States Attorney, Lucy Partain Brown, Assistant United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellee.

Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit. USCA4 Appeal: 21-4420 Doc: 43 Filed: 07/25/2022 Pg: 2 of 3

PER CURIAM:

Antoine Dewayne Myles appeals the 360-month, downward-variant sentence

imposed by the district court on remand for resentencing on his drug trafficking and money

laundering conspiracies and related offenses. On appeal, Myles argues that the district

court erred by opining that it could not consider his request to vary downwardly due to the

disparity in the Sentencing Guidelines’ treatment of crack and powder cocaine offenses.

We affirm.

We review a criminal sentence, “whether inside, just outside, or significantly

outside the Guidelines range,” for reasonableness “under a deferential abuse-of-discretion

standard.” Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 41 (2007); see United States v. Blue, 877

F.3d 513, 517 (4th Cir. 2017). This review requires consideration of both the procedural

and substantive reasonableness of the sentence. Blue, 877 F.3d at 517.

To assess procedural reasonableness, we consider whether the district court properly

calculated the defendant’s advisory Guidelines range, adequately considered the 18 U.S.C.

§ 3553(a) factors, sufficiently explained the selected sentence, and addressed any

nonfrivolous arguments for a different sentence. United States v. Provance, 944 F.3d 213,

218 (4th Cir. 2019). A “district court[] need not robotically tick through § 3553(a)’s every

subsection.” United States v. Arbaugh, 951 F.3d 167, 174 (4th Cir. 2020). The sentencing

explanation need not be extensive, but it must demonstrate that the district court had “a

reasoned basis for exercising [its] own legal decision-making authority.” Provance, 944

F.3d at 218 (internal quotation marks omitted).

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Contrary to Myles’ assertion on appeal, the record reveals that the district court

considered the argument to apply a one-to-one ratio of crack to powder cocaine, rejected

the argument, acknowledged its authority to downwardly vary from the Guidelines range

of life imprisonment to temper the ratio established by Congress, and provided a thorough

explanation for the chosen 360-month sentence. Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s

amended judgment and deny Myles’ motion to file a pro se supplemental brief. 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