UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 14-4297
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
TIMOTHY JAMES THORNE,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern
District of West Virginia, at Parkersburg. Thomas E. Johnston,
District Judge. (6:13-cr-00148-1)
Submitted: September 29, 2014 Decided: October 2, 2014
Before MOTZ and DIAZ, Circuit Judges, and HAMILTON, Senior
Circuit Judge.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Jonathan D. Byrne, Appellate Counsel, George H. Lancaster, Jr.,
Assistant Federal Public Defender, Charleston, West Virginia,
for Appellant. R. Booth Goodwin II, United States Attorney,
Joshua C. Hanks, Assistant United States Attorney, Charleston,
West Virginia, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Timothy James Thorne pled guilty, pursuant to a plea
agreement, to possession of heroin with intent to distribute, in
violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) (2012). The district court
sentenced him as a career offender to a within-Guidelines
sentence of 156 months’ imprisonment. Thorne appeals, claiming
that the district court should have granted a downward variance
based on his drug addiction. We affirm.
We review the district court’s sentence, “whether
inside, just outside, or significantly outside the Guidelines
range,” for reasonableness “under a deferential abuse-of-
discretion standard.” Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 41
(2007). Thorne challenges on appeal only the substantive
reasonableness of his sentence. See id. at 51. We presume that
a sentence within a properly calculated advisory Guidelines
range is reasonable, and this “presumption can only be rebutted
by showing that the sentence is unreasonable when measured
against the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) [(2012)] factors.” United
States v. Louthian, 756 F.3d 295, 306 (4th Cir. 2014).
Thorne argues that the district court failed to
adequately take into account the motivating effect that his drug
addiction had on his crimes and that the court’s denial of a
downward variance was therefore unreasonable. We disagree. The
district court considered Thorne’s drug addiction but concluded
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that his lengthy criminal history warranted a sentence within
the properly calculated advisory Guidelines range. Thorne has
not rebutted the presumption that this conclusion was reasonable
in light of the statutory sentencing factors.
Accordingly, we hold that the sentence imposed by the
district court is substantively reasonable, and we affirm the
judgment of the district court. We dispense with oral argument
because the facts and legal contentions are adequately presented
in the materials before this court and argument would not aid
the decisional process.
AFFIRMED
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