United States v. Terrell Williams
679 F. App'x 873
| 11th Cir. | 2017Background
- In 2005 Williams pled guilty to making a false statement to a federally insured financial institution (18 U.S.C. § 1014) and received 42 months’ imprisonment plus a five-year term of supervised release.
- Williams began supervised release in August 2010; within a year he was alleged to have violated conditions by filing false monthly reports and committing two new Florida offenses (grand theft and schemes to defraud), for which he was convicted and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment (concurrent) in May 2011.
- Williams served most of the state term before admitting at a November 24, 2015 revocation hearing that he committed the supervised release violations; the advisory guideline range was 21–27 months and the statutory maximum was 36 months.
- At successive revocation hearings the government urged a within-guidelines sentence and no further supervised release; defense presented mitigation (reentry/veterans’ work, remorse, testimony from prison mental-health staff) and urged a short prison term plus additional supervised release.
- The district court, noting Williams’s extensive criminal history and that he committed additional financial crimes while on supervised release for a financial crime, sentenced him to 27 months’ imprisonment followed by 33 months’ supervised release (oral five-year term later corrected to 33 months).
Issues
| Issue | Plaintiff's Argument | Defendant's Argument | Held |
|---|---|---|---|
| Whether Williams’s 27-month revocation sentence is substantively unreasonable | Gov't: sentence within guidelines and warranted given history and nature of violations | Williams: district court misweighed §3553(a) factors and failed to give adequate weight to mitigation | Affirmed: within-guidelines sentence not substantively unreasonable; no clear error in weighing §3553(a) factors |
Key Cases Cited
- United States v. Vandergrift, 754 F.3d 1303 (11th Cir. 2014) (standard of review for revocation-sentence reasonableness)
- United States v. Cubero, 754 F.3d 888 (11th Cir. 2014) (procedural and substantive reasonableness framework)
- United States v. Irey, 612 F.3d 1160 (11th Cir. 2010) (en banc) (vacatur standard for sentencing clear error in weighing §3553(a) factors)
- United States v. Pugh, 515 F.3d 1179 (11th Cir. 2008) (burden on challenger to show sentence unreasonable)
- United States v. Hunt, 526 F.3d 739 (11th Cir. 2008) (expectation that within-guidelines sentences are reasonable)
- United States v. Clay, 483 F.3d 739 (11th Cir. 2007) (district court discretion in weighting §3553(a) factors)
- United States v. Langston, 590 F.3d 1226 (11th Cir. 2009) (appellate court will not reweigh §3553(a) factors absent clear error)