UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 16-4060
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
JERONZA THORNE,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western
District of North Carolina, at Charlotte. Max O. Cogburn, Jr.,
District Judge. (3:13-cr-00293-MOC-1)
Submitted: September 29, 2016 Decided: October 3, 2016
Before SHEDD, KEENAN, and HARRIS, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Sandra Barrett, Asheville, North Carolina, for Appellant. Jill
Westmoreland Rose, United States Attorney, Anthony J. Enright,
Assistant United States Attorney, Charlotte, North Carolina, for
Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Jeronza Thorne was convicted by a jury of various offenses
arising out of his participation in a stash house robbery
conspiracy. The district court sentenced him to 137 months’
imprisonment, a term at the bottom of the applicable Sentencing
Guidelines range. Thorne now appeals, arguing that the district
court erred in denying his motion to dismiss the indictment,
which claimed outrageous Government conduct. Further, Thorne
alleges that the Government’s conduct amounted to sentencing
manipulation and thus merited a downward departure at
sentencing.
In reviewing the denial of a motion to dismiss an
indictment, we review the district court’s factual findings for
clear error and its legal conclusions de novo. United States v.
Woolfolk, 399 F.3d 590, 594 (4th Cir. 2005). We review a
sentence for procedural and substantive reasonableness under an
abuse-of-discretion standard. Gall v. United States, 552 U.S.
38, 51 (2007).
The Supreme Court has recognized that, in an extreme case,
governmental misconduct may be so outrageous that it requires
dismissal of charges against a defendant under the Due Process
Clause of the Fifth Amendment. United States v. Russell, 411
U.S. 423, 432 (1973). “In order to constitute a due process
violation, the government’s conduct must be so outrageous as to
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shock the conscience of the court” or be “offensive to
traditional notions of fundamental fairness.” United States v.
Osborne, 935 F.2d 32, 36, 37 (4th Cir. 1991) (internal quotation
marks omitted). “Outrageous is not a label properly applied to
conduct because it is a sting or reverse sting operation
involving contraband.” United States v. Goodwin, 854 F.2d 33,
37 (4th Cir. 1988).
We have rejected arguments of outrageous Government conduct
in other stash house robbery sting operations. United States v.
Hare, 820 F.3d 93, 102-04 (4th Cir. 2016), petition for cert.
filed, __ U.S.L.W. __ (U.S. July 18, 2016) (No. 16-5348).
Thorne attempts to distinguish his case from Hare, asserting
that the Government acted outrageously in his case by failing to
seek his detention for charged supervised release violations,
which would have prevented him from being able to continue in
the conspiracy. We agree with the district court that the
Government’s conduct in this case is not offensive to societal
principles of fairness. Osborne, 935 F.2d at 37. Because
Thorne’s sentencing argument turns on his unsuccessful
allegation of outrageous Government conduct, we also reject that
claim.
Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the district court.
We dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal
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contentions are adequately presented in the materials before
this court and argument would not aid the decisional process.
AFFIRMED
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