United States v. Steven Wilson

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
• Decided: May 20, 2025
• Docket: 24-1507
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

________________

No. 24-1507 ________________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

v.

STEVEN WILSON, Appellant _____________

On Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania (D.C. Criminal No. 3:22-cr-00250-001) District Judge: Honorable Robert D. Mariani ________________

Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a) on April 17, 2025

Before: CHAGARES, Chief Judge, SCIRICA, and RENDELL, Circuit Judges.

(Filed: May 20, 2025)

OPINION* ________________

* This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7 does not constitute binding precedent. SCIRICA, Circuit Judge

Steven Wilson was sentenced to 180 months’ imprisonment on federal drug-related

charges in March 2024. He appeals his sentence, contending the court improperly

considered dismissed state charges against him at his sentencing. We disagree and will

affirm.

Wilson pled guilty to drug-related charges in August 2023. Before his sentencing,

state law enforcement officers found him with a stolen, fraudulently registered truck. The

state charged Wilson in connection with that encounter. His presentence report in this case

included these charges. At sentencing, the court stated in relevant part,

Your convictions, [Assistant U.S. Attorney] Ms. Roberts has detailed with considerable effect here. I won’t repeat them again. Your own lawyer in his presentencing memorandum on your behalf where he did advocate for you, but he acknowledges a significant criminal history and you do. I can’t sit here and say anything different. I won’t repeat all of the offenses for which you were convicted and for which you spent time in incarceration, but they begin in 2007, and Ms. Roberts, as I said, detailed all of them, and they continued right up to the present time, and what’s notable about these -- again, for some reason today, Ms. Roberts is two steps ahead of me -- what she pointed out is true, every time you were incarcerated, you were paroled and you violated parole. I can go through these convictions item by item by item here, conviction by conviction, but it seems to be unnecessary because Ms. Roberts pointed out already to significant effect.

App. 86. Wilson was ultimately sentenced to 180 months in prison and six years of

supervised release, below the applicable Sentencing Guidelines range of 188 to 235

months. After his sentencing, the state dismissed its pending charges.

2 We ordinarily review the imposition of a sentence for abuse of discretion. 1 Gall v.

United States, 552 U.S. 38, 51 (2007). Here, our review is for plain error because Wilson

failed to object at his sentencing, which he does not contest in his reply brief. United States

v. Flores-Mejia, 759 F.3d 253, 256 (3d Cir. 2014). Under plain error review, we reverse

when (1) “there [is] an error or defect” that has not been “affirmatively waived;” (2) “the

legal error [is] clear or obvious,” not “subject to reasonable dispute”; (3) “the error . . .

affected the appellant’s substantial rights,” i.e., “affected the outcome of the district court

proceedings”; and (4) the error “seriously affect[ed] the fairness, integrity or public

reputation of judicial proceedings.” Puckett v. United States, 556 U.S. 129, 135 (2009)

(citations and internal quotation marks omitted).

Wilson contends the court’s statement shows it “considered a pending state charge

as a conviction at the time of [his] sentencing.” Appellant’s Br. 7. A court may not impose

a sentence based on a “bare arrest record—without more.” United States v. Berry, 553

F.3d 273, 284 (3d Cir. 2009). A mere arrest “does not justify an assumption that a

defendant has committed other crimes and . . . therefore [does] not support increasing

his/her sentence in the absence of adequate proof of criminal activity.” Id. The same logic,

Wilson argues, bars the consideration at sentencing of charges that are later dropped.

But we cannot say the court committed a “clear or obvious” error here because the

sentencing colloquy does not unambiguously show the court considered those dismissed

1 The District Court had subject matter jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 3231. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and 18 U.S.C. § 3742(a).

3 state charges. Puckett, 556 U.S. at 135. Wilson points to the following portion of the

statement: “I won’t repeat all of the offenses for which you were convicted and for which

you spent time in incarceration, but they begin in 2007 . . . and they continued right up to

the present time.” App. 86. He contends this “shows that the district court included [his]

pending state prosecution as a conviction because the district court mentions that [his]

convictions ‘continued right up to the present time,’” and the temporally closest criminal

proceeding against Wilson other than this case was the pending state prosecution.

Appellant’s Br. 11. But the most natural reading of the court’s statement is that it excludes

his pending state prosecution from consideration, since it is limited to “offenses for which

[Wilson] w[as] convicted and for which [he] spent time in incarceration.” Appellant’s Br.

11 (emphasis added). And Wilson was neither convicted nor incarcerated on those charges.

By “present time,” the court most likely referred, perhaps imprecisely, to the instant offense

for which Wilson was convicted and being sentenced. Appellant’s Br. 11.

Even if the statement is at best unclear as to whether the court considered the

dropped charges, that is enough to survive plain error review because the error is “subject

to reasonable dispute,” i.e., not “clear or obvious.” Puckett, 556 U.S. at 135; see United

States v. Holman, 840 F.3d 347, 355 (7th Cir. 2016) (“Moreover, any ambiguity with

respect to the district court’s statements [at sentencing] is debatable at most and thus does

not rise to . . . plain error.” (citations omitted)). Accordingly, we need not reach the

government’s argument that the state charges against Wilson were a proper basis for the

court’s sentence.

For the foregoing reasons, we will affirm.