United States v. Seronte Newby

Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit·Decided March 2, 2021·No. 19-3731·Unpublished

Opinion

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION File Name: 21a0112n.06

Nos. 19-3730/3731

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

FILED

Mar 02, 2021

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, )

) DEBORAH S. HUNT, Clerk Plaintiff-Appellee, )

)

ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED v. )

STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR )

THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF

RONQUEIZE HEAD (19-3730); SERONTE )

OHIO

NEWBY (19-3731), )

)

Defendants-Appellants. )

BEFORE: MOORE, GILMAN, and GRIFFIN, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM.

The United States Sentencing Guidelines increase a criminal defendant’s offense level if he possesses a firearm “in connection with another felony offense.” U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(b)(6)(B). The main issue in this appeal is whether Defendants Ronqueize Head and Seronte Newby committed “another felony offense” under the framework we adopted in United States v. Sanders, 162 F.3d 396, 400–01 (6th Cir. 1998). We conclude that they did. Defendants also offer various other arguments for relief. None of them are persuasive. Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s judgments.

I.

Defendants Ronqueize Head and Seronte Newby are maternal half-brothers. Over the course of two weeks in July 2017, they broke into three gun stores and stole over seventy guns.

Defendants’ spree included a break-in at Mark’s Guns, which is in Kentucky; they made off with twenty-two firearms. Law enforcement eventually caught up with the brothers and arrested them.

A federal grand jury indicted both defendants for one count of conspiring to commit theft of a federal firearms licensee and two counts of theft from a federal firearms licensee. The grand jury also charged Head (but not Newby) with one count of possessing a stolen firearm and one count of possession of a firearm by a prohibited person. Head pleaded guilty to his five counts, and Newby pleaded guilty to his three counts.

For both defendants, the Presentence Report (“PSR”) recommended that the district court apply U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(b)(6)(B)’s four-level enhancement. The probation officer reasoned that § 2K2.1(b)(6)(B) applies “if the defendant possessed any firearm or ammunition in connection with another felony offense,” and in this case, the defendants “robbe[d] . . . three separate gun stores” and “possessed stolen firearms while committing a robbery offense.” Newby did not object to the enhancement, but Head did, based on two theories. First, Head argued that § 2K2.1(b)(6)(B) did not apply at all because there were not any eligible offenses to satisfy the enhancement’s “another felony offense” component. Second, he contended that enhancing his sentence pursuant to § 2K2.1(b)(6)(B) would constitute double counting. The government disagreed. It argued that defendants committed felony burglary under Kentucky state-law during their visit to Mark’s Guns, which satisfied the “another felony offense” requirement. Additionally, the government argued that Application Note 14(B) clarified that applying § 2K2.1(b)(6)(B)’s enhancement based on a state-law felony burglary would not constitute double-counting. The district court agreed with the government, overruled Head’s objection, and applied the enhancement. The district court imposed below-Guidelines sentences on both defendants.

Head and Newby each timely appealed.

II.

A.

Defendants challenge the procedural reasonableness of their sentences. Newby did not preserve his procedural-reasonableness attacks on his sentence, so they are subject to plain-error review. United States v. Davis, 751 F.3d 769, 773 (6th Cir. 2014). Head, however, did preserve his procedural-reasonableness challenges to his sentence, so we review them under the abuse of discretion standard. United States v. Mack, 808 F.3d 1074, 1084 (6th Cir. 2015). The party challenging the procedural reasonableness of a sentence has the burden to demonstrate that the district court abused its discretion when it imposed the sentence. United States v. Houston, 529 F.3d 743, 756 (6th Cir. 2008). A district court abuses its discretion when it imposes a procedurally unreasonable sentence. United States v. Amawi, 695 F.3d 457, 486 (6th Cir. 2012). “A sentence is procedurally unreasonable if, among other things, the district court ‘fail[s] to calculate (or improperly calculate[s]) the Guidelines range, treat[s] the Guidelines as mandatory, fail[s] to consider the § 3553(a) factors, select[s] a sentence based on clearly erroneous facts, or fail[s] to adequately explain the chosen sentence.’” Davis, 751 F.3d at 773 (alterations in original) (quoting Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 51 (2007)). And in this context, “our review of the district court’s specific legal determinations . . . is de novo, and our review of the district court’s specific factual findings is for clear error.” Id.

B.

Newby also attacks the substantive reasonableness of his sentence, which we review for an abuse of discretion. United States v. Sherrill, 972 F.3d 752, 769 (6th Cir. 2020). The party disputing the substantive reasonableness of a sentence has the burden to show that the district court abused its discretion when it imposed the sentence. Houston, 529 F.3d at 756. A district court

abuses its discretion when it imposes a substantively unreasonable sentence. Amawi, 695 F.3d at 486. Generally, “a sentence is unreasonable ‘if it is selected arbitrarily, if it is based on impermissible factors, if it fails to consider a relevant sentencing factor, or if it gives an unreasonable amount of weight to any pertinent factor.’” United States v. Massey, 663 F.3d 852, 857 (6th Cir. 2011) (quoting United States v. Rosenbaum, 585 F.3d 259, 267 (6th Cir. 2009)). Here, however, Newby challenges a below-Guidelines sentence caused by a downward variance. Because of that wrinkle, “rather than asking whether considerations based upon § 3553(a) are sufficiently compelling to justify the sentence, this court must determine whether the considerations based upon § 3553(a) are so compelling as to necessitate a shorter sentence.” United States v. Kirchhof, 505 F.3d 409, 414–15 (6th Cir. 2007). And, “[a]lthough it is not impossible to succeed on a substantive-reasonableness challenge to a below-guidelines sentence, defendants who seek to do so bear a heavy burden.” United States v. Greco, 734 F.3d 441, 450 (6th Cir. 2013).

C.

Finally, Newby also brings an ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim. Such “claims are mixed questions of law and fact, which [we] review de novo.” United States v. Levenderis, 806 F.3d 390, 401 (6th Cir. 2015) (citation omitted).

III.

The main issue in this appeal is whether the district court imposed a procedurally unreasonable sentence on defendants when it allegedly miscalculated their Guidelines ranges by— according to defendants—erroneously applying § 2K2.1(b)(6)(B)’s possession-of-a-firearm-in- connection-with-another-felony-offense enhancement. For the reasons to follow, we conclude that the district court correctly imposed the § 2K2.1(b)(6)(B) enhancement.

A.

The parties disagree on the applicable framework for evaluating the district court’s imposition of the § 2K2.1(b)(6)(B) enhancement. On the one hand, there is the framework favored by defendants. It comes from United States v. Sanders, 162 F.3d 396 (6th Cir. 1998). According to Sanders, the “another felony offense” component of the Guideline “require[s], as a condition precedent to the application of . . . [the] enhancement, a finding of a separation of time between the offense of conviction and the other felony offense, or a distinction of conduct between that occurring in the offense of conviction and the other felony offense.” Id. at 400. And defendants assert that in this case, there is no other offense that was separated temporally or involved different conduct from the offense of conviction.

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