United States v. Joseph Brideson

481 F. App'x 16

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
• Decided: August 27, 2012
• Docket: 11-1508-cr (L)
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

SUMMARY ORDER

Defendant-appellant Joseph Brideson appeals from two orders of the District Court, which declined to resentence Bride-son pursuant to the procedure set forth in United States v. Crosby, 397 F.3d 103 (2d Cir.2005), and denied his motion for reconsideration. We assume the parties’ familiarity with the underlying facts and proce dural history of the case, as well as the issues presented for review.

We review a district court’s sentencing decision for procedural and substantive reasonableness under a deferential abuse-of-discretion standard. United States v. Gilmore, 599 F.3d 160, 165 (2d Cir.2010); see also Sims v. Blot, 534 F.3d 117, 132 (2d Cir.2008) (“A district court has abused its discretion if it based its ruling on an erroneous view of the law or on a clearly erroneous assessment of the evidence, or rendered a decision that cannot be located within the range of permissible decisions.” (internal citations, quotation marks, and brackets omitted)). This standard applies equally to a district court’s decision not to resentence a defendant pursuant to Booker and Crosby. United States v. Williams, 475 F.3d 468, 474 (2d Cir.2007). Here, the District Court determined that resentenc-ing was not required because Brideson was sentenced on one count of conviction to a mandatory minimum life sentence, running concurrently with lesser non-mandatory sentences on other counts. This determination was correct, and therefore clearly not an abuse of discretion. As we observed in United States v. Sharpley, 399 F.3d 123 (2d Cir.2005), where a Guidelines sentence is set in accordance with a statutory mandatory minimum, “any reduction in the calculated Guidelines range” based on Booker’s holding that the Guidelines are merely advisory “could not reduce [the defendant’s] actual sentence.” Id. at 127. In cases like this one, any error in the district court’s pre-Booker sentence “is a prototypical example of harmless error.” Id.

Brideson argues that he should be re-sentenced because a fact necessary to support his current sentence — namely, that the victim’s death was caused by gunshot wounds — was found by the district judge and not by the jury. 1 As the District Court correctly observed, however, this is not a proper argument for resentencing under Booker and Crosby, but rather, “a disguised appeal of [Brideson’s] 2002 conviction.” In fact, Brideson raised this precise argument in his direct appeal of his conviction, and we rejected it. See United States v. Riggi, 117 Fed.Appx. 142, 144 (2d Cir.2004) (“[A]s to Brideson’s ‘intervening cause’ argument, there was no error, much less plain error, in the district court’s instruction to the jury that there was no dispute as to Conigliaro’s cause of death.”). 2 As we have previously held, “the law of the case doctrine ordinarily will bar a defendant from renewing challenges to rulings made by the sentencing court that were adjudicated by this Court — or that could have been adjudicated by us had the defendant made them — during the initial appeal that led to the Crosby remand.” Williams, 475 F.3d at 475.

CONCLUSION

We have considered all of Brideson’s arguments on appeal and find them to be without merit. Accordingly, for the reasons stated above, we AFFIRM the orders of the District Court.

1 . Then-Chief Judge Michael B. Mukasey presided over Brideson's trial and sentencing. Judge Rakoff inherited the case upon our Crosby remand.

2 . Brideson’s argument that we misunderstood his argument on direct appeal is both incorrect aiid beside the point.