United States v. Stephen James Walters

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
• Decided: October 10, 2023
• Docket: 22-5930
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION File Name: 23a0431n.06

No. 22-5930

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FILED FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT Oct 10, 2023 DEBORAH S. HUNT, Clerk ) UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ) Plaintiff - Appellee, ) ON APPEAL FROM THE ) UNITED STATES DISTRICT v. ) COURT FOR THE MIDDLE ) DISTRICT OF TENNESSEE STEPHEN JAMES WALTERS, ) ) OPINION Defendant - Appellant. )

Before: BATCHELDER, GRIFFIN, and BLOOMEKATZ, Circuit Judges.

BLOOMEKATZ, Circuit Judge. Stephen Walters pleaded guilty to possessing a firearm

as a convicted felon. In this appeal, Walters challenges the district court’s application of a two-

level enhancement for having possessed at least three but fewer than eight firearms. Because the

district court’s reasoning demonstrates that it would have imposed the same sentence regardless

of the enhancement, we conclude that the alleged error is harmless and affirm.

I. Background

On the morning of March 7, 2021, a Metropolitan Nashville Police Department officer

stopped Stephen Walters for crossing over the center-lane line and driving in the wrong direction.

As the vehicle slowed to a stop, the officer saw someone inside the car toss a black handgun out

of the front passenger-side window. Walters explained that the handgun (a Taurus Armas model

G3 9x19 pistol) belonged to his girlfriend, and that he had thrown it from the vehicle. Walters had

been convicted of a felony offense in 2010. He pleaded guilty in this case to one count of being a

felon in possession of a firearm in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) and proceeded to sentencing. No. 22-5930, United States v. Walters

The United States Probation Department’s presentence report indicated that Walters had

possessed a firearm on more than one occasion in the weeks leading up to his March arrest. The

report noted that Walters posted several pictures and videos of himself in possession of various

firearms to his Facebook page, suggesting that Walters possessed three separate firearms in the

seven weeks prior to his arrest. In light of these Facebook posts, the presentence report

recommended a two-level sentencing enhancement under § 2K2.1(b)(1)(A) of the Sentencing

Guidelines because Walters’s offense involved at least three but fewer than eight firearms.

At sentencing, Walters objected to the enhancement, but the district court decided to apply

it. The court found that the government had met its burden to show that the guns in Walters’s

Facebook posts were real. The court also concluded that the prior firearm possessions satisfied the

three-factor “relevant conduct” standard, which requires that prior conduct be similar, regular, and

close in time to the charged offense before a district court can consider the conduct in its sentencing

calculation. See United States v. Amerson, 886 F.3d 568, 574 (6th Cir. 2018). Regarding regularity

and timing, the district court found that Walters possessed firearms on multiple occasions at least

two and at most seven weeks before his arrest. And, after finding that the same Taurus pistol

Walters threw from his car window appeared in one of his recent posts, the district court held that

Walters’s prior possessions were sufficiently similar to his charged offense. Having determined

that the prior possessions constituted relevant conduct, the district applied the two-level

enhancement. The resulting Guidelines range was 57 to 71 months, as opposed to 46 to 57 months

without the enhancement. Ultimately, the district court chose to vary downward by sentencing

Walters to 37 months and stated that it would have reached this sentence regardless of whether it

applied the enhancement.

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On appeal, Walters claims the district court erred in applying the two-level enhancement.

First, he disputes the district court’s factual finding that the guns in the posts were real and not

props. Second, he insists that the prior firearm possessions do not constitute “relevant conduct”

and that the court was not permitted to consider them in sentencing. Specifically, Walters argues

that the government (and court) improperly relied on uninformative metadata extracted from his

phone to determine the dates on which the images and videos of him with various firearms were

taken. According to Walters, this metadata did not accurately record the creation dates of images

and videos, so it cannot provide useful insight into the regularity and timing of prior firearm

possessions. Indeed, Walters undermines the metadata’s credibility by pointing out that one of the

photographs was posted to Facebook two years before the metadata upon which the government

relied registered its existence and assigned it a “creation” date. And because even the government

concedes its evidence of similarity is weaker than its proof of regularity and timing, Walters

concludes that the government failed to show that the firearm possession pictured in his Facebook

posts is “relevant conduct.”

II. Discussion

We do not address whether the district court erred by applying the enhancement, because

any potential error was “harmless and do[es] not require a remand for re-sentencing.” United States

v. Ward, 506 F.3d 468, 476 (6th Cir. 2007).

Our precedent requires us to exercise thoughtful caution before deciding that a purported

mistake in calculating the appropriate Guidelines range is harmless. The Guidelines calculation is

the “premise from which the district court must begin its sentencing analysis,” so a calculation

error means “that an appellate court would have a difficult time saying that the result would have

been unchanged.” United States v. Anderson, 526 F.3d 319, 330 (6th Cir. 2008). Accordingly, we

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have observed that a calculation error is a “significant procedural error” that “can rarely, if ever,

be found harmless.” Id. (citation and internal quotation marks omitted); see also Molina-Martinez

v. United States, 578 U.S. 189, 198–99 (2016).

But error alone is not always enough to show that a defendant was harmed. In limited

circumstances, we have “found a defendant’s substantial rights unharmed where the record below

indicates with certainty that the defendant’s sentence would be no different absent the error

alleged.” United States v. Johnson, 467 F.3d 559, 565 (6th Cir. 2006). A remand for resentencing

is not required if “‘we are certain that any such error was harmless—i.e., any such error did not

affect the district court’s selection of the sentence imposed.’” United States v. Ziesel, 38 F.4th 512,

515-16 (6th Cir. 2022) (quoting United States v. Hazelwood, 398 F.3d 292, 801 (6th Cir. 2005));

see also United States v. McCarty, 628 F.3d 284, 294 (6th Cir. 2010).

We evaluate harmless error by closely examining the sentencing record. An explicit

statement by the district court confirming that it “would impose the same sentence on alternative

grounds” is a persuasive signal that any calculation error was harmless. United States v. Obi, 542

F.3d 148, 156 (6th Cir. 2008); see also McCarty, 628 F.3d at 394; Ward, 506 F.3d at 477; United

States v. Cobb, 766 F. App’x 226, 231 (6th Cir. 2019). But a “standard-issue pledge that the district

court would have come to the same result” intended to “thwart a deserved resentencing” does not

influence our harmless-error analysis. United States v. Montgomery, 969 F.3d 582, 583 (6th Cir.

2020). The court’s statements must go “beyond unadorned boilerplate to explain how the district

court’s properly invoked discretion reasonably arrives at the same sentence.” United States v.

Lucas, Nos. 19-6390, 19-6392, 19-6393, 19-6394, 2021 WL 4099241, at *13 (6th Cir. Sept. 9,

2021).

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Assuming arguendo that the district court erred here by applying a two-level enhancement,

the error is harmless. The district court’s reasoning during the sentencing hearing leaves no doubt

that it would have imposed the same sentence without the enhancement. This is in part because

the district court “explicitly stated that [it] would impose the same sentence on alternative

grounds,” Obi, 542 F.3d at 156:

If the guideline calculation was wrong, the Court would have imposed the same sentence under Section 3553(a) considering those factors as a whole. In particular, I would just note that even if the enhancement had not been applied, we would—I think I would still be varying below the guidelines as—the guideline range suggested by [Walters’s counsel] in his objection.

Sentencing Tr., R. 83 at 47.

But our inquiry does not end there. We also evaluate whether such a statement is mere

boilerplate to make “certain” that the enhancement did not “affect the district court’s selection of

the sentence imposed.” Ziesel, 38 F.4th at 515–16.

Here, the district court provided an extensive non-Guidelines justification for its sentence,

assuring us that any alleged error is harmless. Its statement that it would have imposed the same

sentence irrespective of the enhancement was not an unexplained or unsubstantiated disclaimer.

Instead, it is supported by the district court’s lengthy discussion of the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)

sentencing factors. The district court addressed each factor separately, explaining how it justified

either a more severe sentence or counseled in favor of leniency. For example, when reflecting on

the history and characteristics of the defendant as the first factor under § 3553(a) instructs, the

district court acknowledged the “numerous domestic violence convictions in [Walters’s] past” but

paused to clarify that “almost all of those are pretty far into [the] past;” noted the “one burglary

conviction from some time ago;” observed that Walters had “encountered violence as a child,

watching someone close . . . die from [a] gunshot wound;” commended Walters’s parents for doing

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“the best they could to raise [Walters] well” in a “good stable home” with a “good upbringing;”

recognized that Walters suffered from “mental health challenges . . . likely some PTSD;” and

praised Walters for “maintain[ing] good employment,” “[being] involved in [his] children’s lives,”

and “hav[ing] done well on pretrial release.” Sentencing Tr., R. 83 at 40-41. The thoroughness of

the § 3553(a) analysis reinforces our view that the district court arrived at Walters’s sentence

through careful consideration of the sentencing factors and that those factors accounted for so

much of the district court’s decision that any error in calculating the Guidelines range would not

have changed the outcome.

Additional elements of the district court’s reasoning further indicate that the court would

have imposed the same sentence regardless of the enhancement. First, the district court identified

the specific mitigating circumstances that persuaded it to vary downward, emphasizing Walters’s

“mental health issues, his conduct on pretrial release, and some exposure to violence at a young

age that likely led to some of the mental health issues, particularly PTSD.” Id. at 47. The district

court emphasized that among all the facts it considered in its § 3553(a) analysis, these key pieces

of information drove its sentencing decision. Its reasoning was not generalized; it was detailed and

thorough.

Second, the district court varied below the Guidelines range calculated without the

enhancement. Although this fact is not dispositive on its own of whether any error in applying the

enhancement is harmless, it does demonstrate that the district court did not feel constrained by the

Guidelines range. We have previously held that, against the backdrop of other evidence indicating

harmless error, we are “especially” convinced where a defendant’s sentence falls within either of

the proposed Guidelines ranges. McCarty, 628 F.3d at 294; see also United States v. Steel, 609 F.

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App’x 851, 855 (6th Cir. 2015). The same principle applies here with even greater force because

the district court chose a sentence that varied below both possible ranges.

Walters argues that “the district court’s statement that it would have given Mr. Walters the

same sentence regardless of the relevant conduct determination should carry no weight because

these words are standard in this judge’s sentencing colloquies”—in other words, the statement is

the district court’s boilerplate language. Reply Br. at 7. Whether this district court has included

boilerplate language in previous cases is beyond the scope of our review, but the district court’s

statement in this case is not boilerplate. The district court did not simply recite a talismanic

sentence designed to trigger our harmless error doctrine and prevent an otherwise deserved

resentencing. The court’s individualized assessment of Walter’s circumstances—his childhood

exposure to violence, his mental-health issues, and his exemplary behavior on pretrial release—

could not appear in sentencing colloquies involving different defendants. The district court’s

statement rests on reasoning that is sufficiently detailed, thorough, and specific to show that the

sentencing judge would have selected the same sentence even without the enhancement.

III. Conclusion

For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM the district court’s judgment.

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