USA v. Jeffrey Riggins, No. 21-2005 (3d Cir. 2022)
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NOT PRECEDENTIAL UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT __________ No. 21-2005 ___________ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. JEFFREY RIGGINS, Appellant ________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (D.C. Criminal Action No. 2-06-cr-00700-001) Chief District Judge: Honorable Juan R. Sanchez ________________ Submitted Under Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a) November 18, 2022 Before: AMBRO, KRAUSE, and BIBAS, Circuit Judges (Opinion filed December 2, 2022) ___________ OPINION* ___________ AMBRO, Circuit Judge. * This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7 does not constitute binding precedent. In 2008, Jeffrey Riggins was sentenced to a 432-month term of imprisonment for drug distribution and for unlawfully possessing a firearm as a convicted felon. At the time, Riggins was sentenced as a career offender under U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1 based on several qualifying predicate offenses, including a Pennsylvania drug trafficking conviction and a Pennsylvania felony robbery conviction. In 2019, Riggins successfully moved for a sentence reduction under § 404 of the First Step Act. After the Parties agreed on an updated Guidelines range of 262 to 327 months, the District Court resentenced Riggins to a term of 240 months’ imprisonment. Riggins then appealed, arguing that the District Court erred by applying the careeroffender enhancement from U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1.1 He reasons that his prior Pennsylvania robbery conviction no longer qualifies as a crime of violence, and thus his Guidelines range should have been reduced further (along with his sentence). We must reject Riggins’s argument because a district court cannot “recalculate a movant’s benchmark Guidelines range in any way other than to reflect the retroactive application of the Fair Sentencing Act.” Concepcion v. United States, 142 S. Ct. 2389, 2402 n.6 (2022); see also United States v. Shields, 48 F.4th 183, 190 (3d Cir. 2022) (“Concepcion thus validated the District Court’s decision to recalculate [the defendant’s] Guidelines range as if the Fair Sentencing Act’s amendments had been in place at the time of his offense, without taking into account any other intervening changes in law . . . .”). We have reviewed the record and identify no error in the District Court’s calculation 1 The District Court had jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. §§ 3231 and 3582(c)(1)(B), and we have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. 2 of the benchmark Guidelines range. Moreover, the sentencing colloquy shows a thoughtful weighing of the relevant 18 U.S.C. § 3553 factors and satisfies us that the District Court “considered the parties’ arguments and ha[d] a reasoned basis for exercising [its] own legal decisionmaking authority.”2 Shields, 48 F.4th at 194 (quoting Rita v. United States, 551 U.S. 338, 356 (2007)). We will therefore affirm the judgment of the District Court. We agree with the Government that Riggins’s counseled sentencing memoranda abandoned any argument that he should receive a lesser sentence because of the change to U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1. Compare Suppl. App. 27–28 & n.3 (Mot. For Resentencing), with Supp. App. at 71–78 (Suppl. Mot. For Reduced Sentence); see also Shields, 48 F.4th at 190–91 (citing Concepcion, 142 S. Ct. at 2396, 2402–03) (requiring a district court to consider nonfrivolous arguments concerning “any intervening changes of law (such as changes to the Sentencing Guidelines)” insofar as they are “raised by the parties”) (cleaned up). 2 3
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