NOT PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
No. 10-1429
______
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
v.
TRACEY LEA,
Appellant
On Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
(D.C. No. 2-05-cr-00479-002)
District Judge: Honorable Legrome D. Davis
Submitted Under Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a)
November 8, 2010
Before: McKEE, Chief Judge, SLOVITER, and COWEN, Circuit Judges.
(Filed: November 18, 2010)
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OPINION
SLOVITER, Circuit Judge.
Appellant Tracey Lea was sentenced to twelve months imprisonment for a series
of probation violations. She appeals the reasonableness of that sentence.1 We will
affirm.
I.
In 2006, Lea pled guilty to making a false statement to a firearms licensee in
violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(a)(1)(A) and was sentenced to three years of probation. Lea
subsequently violated conditions of her probation. Consequently, based on a Guidelines
range of three to nine months imprisonment, Lea was sentenced to six months
imprisonment and thirty months supervised release, with the first 120 days in a halfway
house. Lea appealed that sentence and we affirmed. United States v. Lea, 350 F. App’x.
754 (3d Cir. 2009) (not precedential).
Once released from custody, Lea again violated the conditions of her supervised
release by failing to report to her probation officer, failing to advise the probation officer
of her change of address, using illegal drugs, and failing to participate in a treatment
program. The Guidelines range for these violations was again three to nine months
imprisonment. The District Court held a revocation hearing. At the hearing, Lea did not
deny the violations and agreed that a term of imprisonment was appropriate. The
1
The District Court had jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. §
3231. We have jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 3742(a) and 28
U.S.C. § 1291.
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Government and probation officer recommended a term of imprisonment at the high end
of this range, with no supervision to follow. After discussing the violations with the Lea,
the probation officer, and counsel, the District Court imposed a sentence of twelve
months imprisonment, with no supervised release to follow. The imprisonment term is
three months longer than the high end of the Guidelines range.
II.
We review the reasonableness of a sentence under an abuse-of-discretion standard.
United States v. Tomko, 562 F.3d 558, 564-68 (3d Cir. 2009) (en banc). There is no
dispute that the District Court accurately calculated the Guidelines range, nor were there
any motions for departure. Although the defendant does not expressly complain that the
Court imposed an above-Guidelines sentence, such a sentence was consistent with the
District Court’s actions in imposing progressively more serious sanctions in an effort to
bring the defendant into compliance. The Court stated it had purposefully chosen a harsh
sentence in the hope that Lea would be more motivated to comply with the dictates of the
law, stating “I want you to understand that the jail is an uncomfortable experience where
you are missing things that are important to you . . . .” Supp. App. at 30. The Court
continued, “if you think that, you can come to that realization, maybe next time you’ll try
harder at it.” Id.
As in her prior appeal, Lea contends that the District Court failed to consider and
apply the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factors. However, the record reflects that to the extent
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these mitigating factors were raised, the District Court considered each of them when
crafting a sentence. Accordingly, the sentence was procedurally reasonable. Nor can we
conclude that the sentence was a substantively unreasonable abuse of discretion given
Lea’s repeated violations and the need for incremental punishment.
III.
For the above-stated reasons, we will affirm the judgment and sentence.
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