United States v. Keno Lane

Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit·Decided November 12, 2025·No. 24-6083·Unpublished

Opinion

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION File Name: 25a0525n.06

Case No. 24-6083

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FILED FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT Nov 12, 2025 KELLY L. STEPHENS, Clerk

)

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, )

Plaintiff - Appellee, )

ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED )

v. STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR )

THE MIDDLE DISTRICT OF )

KENO LANE, TENNESSEE )

Defendant - Appellant. )

OPINION

)

Before: GIBBONS, McKEAGUE, and RITZ, Circuit Judges.

JULIA SMITH GIBBONS, Circuit Judge. Over the past decade, Defendant-Appellant Keno Lane has been entangled in the criminal justice system. In 2017, a federal district court sentenced Lane to a 60-month term of imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release, pursuant to a plea agreement for crimes he admitted committing in 2015. After his release in 2020, Lane began a three-year term of supervised release. But within three months of his release, the probation office submitted a petition alleging that Lane had violated the terms of his supervised release. And in the year following Lane’s release, the probation office superseded its original petition multiple times due to repeated violations.

By January 2022, the district court had revoked Lane’s supervision, imposed a six-month custodial sentence, and ordered him to serve fifteen months of supervision upon his release. After his release, the probation office filed yet another petition alleging two violations: that Lane (i) was charged with fifteen counts ranging from first-degree murder to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in a Tennessee state court (“Violation #1”) and (ii) failed to report for drug testing on

several occasions (“Violation #2”). In November 2024, Lane appeared before the district court and admitted to Violation #1, for which he pled guilty to reckless homicide in exchange of having his state charges dismissed. Based on Lane’s state-court plea hearing, the district court concluded that Violation #1 should be categorized as Grade A given the involvement of a firearm and the violent nature of the crime. In calculating the applicable Guidelines range, the district court determined that Lane’s range was 24 to 30 months. Subsequently, it ordered Lane to serve 24 months in custody.

On appeal, Lane argues that his sentence is both procedurally and substantively unreasonable. Because we afford the district court’s sentencing decision significant deference and Lane’s state offense involved the possession of a firearm, we affirm the district court’s sentence.

I.

A. Lane’s Original Conviction & Sentence In June 2016, a federal grand jury in the Middle District of Tennessee returned a thirty-one count multi-defendant indictment that included Lane, charging him with the following four counts: two counts of illegally possessing a firearm as an unlawful user of a controlled substance, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§922(g)(3) and 924; one count of making false declarations before a grand jury, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1623; and one count of obstructing a federal grand jury proceeding, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1503. In April 2017, Lane pled guilty to each of these counts.

In the plea agreement, Lane admitted to various facts underlying these four counts. First, Lane admitted to being a regular and unlawful user of controlled substances such as marijuana and cocaine. Second, Lane admitted that when a Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (“MNPD”) officer stopped his girlfriend’s vehicle in September 2015, he had a stolen semi- automatic pistol that a ballistic test later determined had been used in multiple violent crimes,

including armed robberies and a murder. Third, Lane admitted to providing false testimony to a grand jury regarding how he had obtained this pistol. Fourth, Lane admitted that when a different MNPD officer stopped him in January 2016, he was in possession of another stolen firearm and was subsequently arrested, although he was able to post bond soon thereafter. Lastly, Lane admitted to failing to appear in response to a grand jury subpoena in February 2016, although he knew he had to be present and was not in custody or otherwise unavailable at the time.

In October 2017, the district court sentenced Lane to a sixty-month term of imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release.

B. Lane’s Repeated Violations of His Supervised Release In June 2020, Lane completed his prison sentence and began his three-year term of supervised release. By October 2020, the probation office submitted a petition alleging that Lane had violated the conditions of his supervision due to his failure to: (1) notify the probation officer of his address change; (2) notify the probation officer of his loss of employment; (3) participate in a court-mandated drug-testing program and substance abuse treatment; (4) register as a convicted felon; and (5) pay the court-ordered special assessment.

The probation office superseded its petition four times between January and March 2021, alleging Lane had failed to refrain from unlawfully using controlled substances, submit monthly supervision reports, undergo required drug testing, and participate in required substance abuse treatment. On March 25, 2021, Lane admitted to the violations in the fifth petition, and the district court ordered him to complete custodial treatment at a residential reentry center lasting between 90 to 180 days.

Upon completion of his court-mandated treatment in mid-August 2021, Lane violated the conditions of his supervision a sixth time. At the end of August 2021, the probation office

amended its petition to add an additional violation for drug use and failure to pay a mandatory assessment fee. In November 2021, the probation office superseded its August petition by asserting additional violations.

In January 2022, Lane appeared before the district court and admitted to the alleged violations in the superseding petition from November 2021. The district court found Lane guilty and revoked his supervision. Accordingly, the district court imposed a six-month custodial sentence; ordered Lane to serve 15 months of supervised release upon completing his sentence; and directed him to undergo further drug treatment at a residential reentry center.

C. Lane’s Final Supervised Release Violation Lane’s conduct during his final supervised release serves as the catalyst for the events underlying his appeal to our court. After Lane was released from his six-month custodial sentence in May 2022, the probation office filed a petition in September 2022, alleging that Lane had committed two violations. Violation #1 alleged that Lane had been arrested and charged with fifteen felonies in Davidson County: first degree murder (two counts); murder (four counts); attempted first degree murder (four counts); especially aggravated burglary (four counts); and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon (one count). The petition recommended that the district court categorize Violation #1 as “Grade A,” which when combined with Lane’s criminal history category IV, would result in a Guidelines range of 24-30 months. A “Grade A” violation encompasses

conduct constituting (A) a federal, state, or local offense punishable by a term of imprisonment exceeding one year that (i) is a crime of violence, (ii) is a controlled substance offense, or (iii) involves possession of a firearm or destructive device of a type described in 26 U.S.C. § 5845(a); or (B) any other federal, state, or local offense punishable by a term of imprisonment exceeding twenty years.

U.S.S.G. § 7B1.1 (a)(1).

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