UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 16-4241
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
MAMADOU JALLOW,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern
District of North Carolina, at Raleigh. James C. Dever III,
Chief District Judge. (5:13-cr-00126-D-1)
Submitted: November 14, 2016 Decided: November 21, 2016
Before GREGORY, Chief Judge, and MOTZ and DUNCAN, Circuit
Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Elliot Sol Abrams, CHESHIRE PARKER SCHNEIDER & BRYAN, PLLC,
Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellant. John Stuart Bruce,
United States Attorney, Jennifer P. May-Parker, Kristine L.
Fritz, Assistant United States Attorneys, Raleigh, North
Carolina, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Mamadou Jallow appeals the district court’s judgment
revoking his supervised release and sentencing him to the
authorized statutory maximum term of 24 months’ imprisonment.
On appeal, Jallow challenges the district court’s rationale for
imposing the statutory maximum term of imprisonment, asserting
that the selected sentence runs afoul of United States v. Webb,
738 F.3d 638 (4th Cir. 2013). We affirm.
We have routinely recognized that, in the context of a
supervised release revocation, “the sentencing court retains
broad discretion to impose a term of imprisonment up to the
statutory maximum.” United States v. Padgett, 788 F.3d 370, 373
(4th Cir.) (ellipsis and internal quotation marks omitted),
cert. denied, 136 S. Ct. 494 (2015). “We will not disturb a
district court’s revocation sentence unless it falls outside the
statutory maximum or is otherwise plainly unreasonable.” Id.
(internal quotation marks omitted). In reviewing a revocation
sentence, we utilize the familiar procedural and substantive
considerations employed for evaluating the reasonableness of an
original criminal sentence, but “we strike a more deferential
appellate posture than we do when reviewing original sentences.”
Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).
A revocation sentence is procedurally reasonable if the
district court considered the advisory policy statement range
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and the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) (2012) factors applicable to
supervised release revocation. Id.; United States v. Crudup,
461 F.3d 433, 438–40 (4th Cir. 2006). A sentence is
substantively reasonable if the district court “sufficiently
stated a proper basis” for the selected sentence, up to the
statutory maximum. Crudup, 461 F.3d at 440. Only if we
determine that a revocation sentence is unreasonable need we
consider “whether it is plainly so.” Padgett, 788 F.3d at 373.
In exercising its sentencing discretion, the district court
“should sanction primarily the defendant’s breach of trust,
while taking into account, to a limited degree, the seriousness
of the underlying violation and the criminal history of the
violator.” Webb, 738 F.3d at 641. In determining the length of
a sentence imposed upon revocation of supervised release, 18
U.S.C. § 3583(e) (2012) requires a sentencing court to consider
all but two of the factors listed in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a).
The record confirms that the district court faithfully
followed this process in sentencing Jallow. After properly
calculating Jallow’s policy statement range, hearing argument
from both attorneys, and allowing Jallow to allocute, the court
announced several bases for imposing on Jallow the statutory
maximum term of imprisonment. The most significant of these
reasons was that Jallow egregiously breached the court’s trust
when, while on supervised release, he repeatedly engaged in the
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same criminal conduct for which he was initially convicted and
sentenced. The severity of the breach was exacerbated by the
fact that Jallow’s supervised release had previously been
revoked for committing a similar crime. These facts established
Jallow’s staunch refusal to abide by the terms and conditions of
his supervised release, as well as his determination to flout
the court’s authority. We thus readily uphold the revocation
sentence as reasonable. See Crudup, 461 F.3d at 440 (holding
that imposition of statutory maximum term of imprisonment was
substantively reasonable, given that the district court
expressly relied on defendant’s “admitted pattern of violating
numerous conditions of his supervised release,” despite several
extensions of leniency by the district court).
Against this backdrop, we consider Jallow’s argument that
the district court erred, under Webb, in imposing the statutory
maximum term of imprisonment available in this case. In Webb,
the defendant received a 32-month revocation sentence after
being found to have committed a Grade A supervised release
violation. 738 F.3d at 640. This was near the bottom of Webb’s
policy statement range and thus presumptively reasonable. Id.
at 642. The primary issue in Webb was whether a district
court’s reference to § 3553(a) sentencing factors not identified
in § 3583(e) renders a sentence per se plainly procedurally
unreasonable, and we rejected this contention. Id. at 641-42
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(holding “that [the] mere reference to such considerations does
not render a revocation sentence procedurally unreasonable when
those factors are relevant to, and considered in conjunction
with, the enumerated § 3553(a) factors”). Jallow seeks to
demonstrate the unreasonableness of his sentence by comparing
the conduct leading to the revocation of his term of supervised
release to that at issue in Webb. But this argument fails to
appreciate the considerable discretion judges have in selecting
a revocation sentence and overemphasizes the significance of the
court’s use of the word “felonious” in its explanation for the
selected sentence. Thus, we are not persuaded by this
assignment of error.
Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s judgment. 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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