United States v. Antonio Taylor

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
• Decided: July 9, 2024
• Docket: 23-4399
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

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UNPUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 23-4399

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff - Appellee,

v.

ANTONIO TAYLOR,

Defendant - Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, at Wilmington. Terrence W. Boyle, District Judge. (7:22-cr-00084-BO-RJ-1)

Submitted: June 28, 2024 Decided: July 9, 2024

Before NIEMEYER and THACKER, Circuit Judges, and KEENAN, Senior Circuit Judge.

Vacated and remanded by unpublished per curiam opinion.

ON BRIEF: G. Alan DuBois, Federal Public Defender, Jennifer C. Leisten, Assistant Federal Public Defender, OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellant. Michael F. Easley, Jr., United States Attorney, David A. Bragdon, Assistant United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellee.

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PER CURIAM:

Antonio Taylor pled guilty without a written plea agreement to possession of a

firearm by a felon, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1), 924(a)(2). The district court

sentenced Taylor to 48 months’ imprisonment, which was above the advisory Sentencing

Guidelines range. On appeal, Taylor argues that his sentence is procedurally unreasonable

because the district court failed to address his nonfrivolous arguments for a within-

Guidelines sentence. The Government counters that the record establishes that the district

court rejected Taylor’s mitigating arguments and that the court’s reasons for rejecting

Taylor’s arguments were patently obvious in context. And, in any event, the Government

asserts, any procedural error was harmless. For the reasons that follow, we vacate the

criminal judgment and remand for resentencing.

We review the procedural reasonableness of Taylor’s sentence “under a deferential

abuse-of-discretion standard.” United States v. Lewis, 18 F.4th 743, 748 (4th Cir. 2021)

(internal quotation marks omitted). For a sentence to be procedurally reasonable, “a district

court must conduct an individualized assessment of the facts and arguments presented and

impose an appropriate sentence, and it must explain the sentence chosen.” United States

v. Nance, 957 F.3d 204, 212 (4th Cir. 2020) (internal quotation marks omitted).

Of particular importance here, a district court “must address or consider all

nonfrivolous reasons presented for imposing a different sentence and explain why [it] has

rejected those arguments.” United States v. Ross, 912 F.3d 740, 744 (4th Cir. 2019). A

district court satisfies this requirement “if it, although somewhat briefly, outlines the

defendant’s particular history and characteristics not merely in passing or after the fact, but

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as part of its analysis of the statutory factors and in response to defense counsel’s arguments

for a [lower sentence].” United States v. Lozano, 962 F.3d 773, 782 (4th Cir. 2020)

(internal quotation marks omitted). At bottom, the district court’s “explanation need not

be exhaustive or robotically tick through the [18 U.S.C.] § 3553(a) factors,” but it “must

be sufficient to satisfy the appellate court that the district court has considered the parties’

arguments and has a reasoned basis for exercising its own legal decisionmaking authority.”

United States v. Friend, 2 F.4th 369, 379 (4th Cir. 2021) (cleaned up). As long as the

“district court addresses [the] defendant’s ‘central thesis,’” an exhaustive explanation is

not required. United States v. Powers, 40 F.4th 129, 137 (4th Cir. 2022). Still, some

explanation is necessary, as we may not “guess at which arguments the court might have

considered or assume that the court has silently adopted arguments presented by a party.”

Nance, 957 F.3d at 214 (internal quotation marks omitted). Moreover, when a district court

imposes a variance, the court must give “serious consideration” to the extent of the variance

and adequately explain the chosen sentence. United States v. King, 673 F.3d 274, 283 (4th

Cir. 2012).

Although the parties dispute what constituted Taylor’s “central thesis” at

sentencing, our review of the record leads us to conclude that Taylor’s sentence is

procedurally unreasonable because the district court did not address a nonfrivolous

argument Taylor made for imposing a lower sentence, nor did it explain why it had rejected

that argument. See Ross, 912 F.3d at 744. Specifically, the district court failed to address

Taylor’s primary argument that his criminal history was old and that the birth of his child,

coupled with the time he spent incarcerated, changed his perspective. Even viewing the

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court’s explanation in the context of the sentencing hearing as a whole, the record fails to

provide sufficient contextual indicators to confirm that the court, in fact, considered these

arguments or to illuminate its reasons for rejecting them. See Nance, 957 F.3d at 213;

United States v. Blue, 877 F.3d 513, 519 (4th Cir. 2017). Absent more, we are left to “guess

at the district court’s rationale” when factoring these considerations into its sentencing

calculus, inhibiting our meaningful appellate review of the sentence. See Ross, 912 F.3d

at 745 (internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, we conclude that the court procedurally

erred in failing to provide adequate explanation when rejecting Taylor’s arguments for a

within-Guidelines sentence.

The Government alternatively contends that any deficiency in the court’s

explanation is harmless. A procedural sentencing error is harmless if it “did not have a

substantial and injurious effect or influence on the result and we can say with fair assurance

that the district court’s explicit consideration of the defendant’s arguments would not have

affected the sentence imposed.” United States v. Boulware, 604 F.3d 832, 838 (4th Cir.

2010) (cleaned up); see Ross, 912 F.3d at 745. Our review of the record belies the

Government’s assertion that the court’s failure to more explicitly consider or address these

remaining arguments is harmless.

Accordingly, we vacate the criminal judgment and remand for resentencing. 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.

VACATED AND REMANDED