United States v. Harold Hooten

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
• Decided: September 15, 2025
• Docket: 24-2974
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT _______________

No. 24-2974 _______________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

v.

HAROLD HOOTEN, Appellant _______________

On Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania (D.C. No. 2:21-cr-00265) District Judge: Hon. Cathy Bissoon _______________

Submitted Under Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a) on September 15, 2025

Before: BIBAS, MONTGOMERY-REEVES, and AMBRO, Circuit Judges

(Filed: September 15, 2025) _______________

OPINION* _______________

* This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and, under I.O.P. 5.7, is not binding precedent. BIBAS, Circuit Judge.

Sentencing judges have broad discretion to weigh justice and mercy. Defendants rou-

tinely promise to change, but it is wise to compare their promises with their track records.

The past is prologue.

Harold Hooten broke the terms of his supervised release and was sent back to prison

for ten months, but he says a lower sentence would better help him handle his drug addic-

tion and mental health. Yet the District Court weighed his plans for the future against the

proof from the past. Because that was no abuse of discretion, we will affirm.

Over the last quarter-century-plus, Hooten has been convicted eighteen times. His

crimes range from theft to marijuana possession to domestic violence. After his most recent

conviction, for conspiracy to possess cocaine, he asked for a “shorter sentence with a longer

supervised release tail.” Supp. App. 46. He said this “oversight and accountability” was

“precisely what [he] need[ed].” Id. The District Court obliged, sentencing him to only 24

months in prison (less than half of what the Guidelines recommended) followed by three

years of supervised release.

But Hooten failed to follow through. Less than a year into his supervised release, he

failed five drug tests. Though the court had ordered him to get treatment for drug use,

mental health, and anger management, he kept skipping those sessions. Then he was arrested

for assaulting, strangling, and harassing his wife. In exchange for the Government’s drop-

ping the supervised-release violation related to those crimes, he pleaded guilty to violating his

supervised release by possessing drugs and not completing drug treatment. The District

2 Court sentenced him within the Guidelines to 10 months in prison followed by 24 months

of supervised release.

Hooten now appeals, challenging his supervised-release term as substantively unrea-

sonable. He says a shorter sentence would better reflect his addictions and mental health,

and he attacks supervised release as in practice ineffective and punitive. We review for

abuse of discretion, asking “whether the record as a whole reflects rational and meaningful

consideration of the factors enumerated in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a).” United States v. Tomko,

562 F.3d 558, 568 (3d Cir. 2009) (en banc) (internal quotation marks omitted); United

States v. Bungar, 478 F.3d 540, 542 (3d Cir. 2007) (applying same standard to violations

of supervised release).

The District Court carefully considered those factors. It weighed Hooten’s mental

health and addictions, pleading with him to get help and urging him to get treatment “on

the government’s dime.” JA 115–17. And it accounted for his acceptance of responsibility.

But it balanced those factors against Hooten’s criminal history, his chronic recidivism, and

his “complete[ ] fail[ure]” to follow through on any of the court-ordered treatment. JA 114.

The court’s within-Guidelines sentence was reasonable, indeed merciful. His previous

supervised-release term was three years; two years is a break. We cannot say that “no rea-

sonable sentencing court would have imposed the same sentence on that particular defend-

ant for the reasons the district court provided.” Tomko, 562 F.3d at 568. So we will affirm.