United States v. Robert Davis

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
• Decided: February 12, 2025
• Docket: 24-5789
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION File Name: 25a0082n.06

No. 24-5789

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FILED FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT Feb 12, 2025 KELLY L. STEPHENS, Clerk ) UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ) Plaintiff-Appellee, ) ON APPEAL FROM THE ) v. UNITED STATES DISTRICT ) COURT FOR THE WESTERN ) ROBERT G. DAVIS, DISTRICT OF KENTUCKY ) Defendant-Appellant. ) OPINION )

Before: GIBBONS, LARSEN, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM. After serving a prison sentence for possessing a firearm as a convicted

felon, Robert Davis was required to reside in a halfway house for six months and undergo mental

health counseling and sex offender treatment as part of his supervised-release conditions. Davis

repeatedly clashed with employees at the halfway house, failed to follow the house rules, and failed

to appear for sex offender treatment. The probation office moved to revoke Davis’s supervised

release. Davis conceded that he violated the terms of his supervised release. The district court

sentenced him to 10 months’ imprisonment for the violation. Davis now claims that this sentence

is both procedurally and substantively unreasonable. We AFFIRM.

We review the procedural reasonableness challenge for plain error because Davis failed to

preserve his objection in the district court. See United States v. Holt, 116 F.4th 599, 613 (6th Cir.

2024). Davis argues that the court erred by considering two of the factors listed in 18 U.S.C.

§ 3553(a)(2)(A) when fashioning his sentence—the need “to promote respect for the law, and to

provide just punishment for the offense.” In his view, 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e) does not allow a district No. 24-5789United States v. Davis

court to consider those factors when revoking supervised release and imposing a new sentence.

Davis concedes, however, that our caselaw forecloses that argument. See United States v. Esteras,

88 F.4th 1163, 1167–70 (6th Cir. 2023), cert. granted 2024 WL 4529806 (Oct. 21, 2024). So he

cannot show plain error.

Davis also challenges the substantive reasonableness of his sentence. A substantive

reasonableness challenge is “a complaint that the court placed too much weight on some of the

§ 3553(a) factors and too little on others in sentencing the individual.” United States v. Rayyan,

885 F.3d 436, 442 (6th Cir. 2018). Davis cannot overcome the presumption of reasonableness

afforded his within-Guidelines sentence. See United States v. Xu, 114 F.4th 829, 846–47 (6th Cir.

2024). The court considered the good: while on supervised release, Davis hadn’t been arrested

and “had three out of four clean drug tests.” R. 75, PageID 513. But it also considered the

bad: Davis did “not work well under supervision of others”; never took responsibility for his

actions and instead repeatedly blamed those trying to help him; and had numerous disciplinary

reports. Id. at 513–16. Finding that the bad outweighed the good, the court concluded that Davis

was “someone who is simply not capable of oversight that the United States Probation Office can

provide.” Id. at 516. “We see no basis for second guessing that judgment.” Rayyan, 85 F.3d at

443.

We AFFIRM.

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