US v. Rodney Hailey, No. 13-4188 (4th Cir. 2014)
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UNPUBLISHED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT No. 13-4188 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. RODNEY R. HAILEY, Defendant - Appellant. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, at Baltimore. William D. Quarles, Jr., District Judge. (1:11-cr-00540-WDQ-1) Submitted: March 18, 2014 Decided: March 27, 2014 Before KING, DUNCAN, and AGEE, Circuit Judges. Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion. Gerald C. Ruter, THE LAW OFFICES OF GERALD C. RUTER, P.C., Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellant. Rod J. Rosenstein, United States Attorney, Stefan D. Cassella, Assistant United States Attorney, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee. Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit. PER CURIAM: Following a six-day jury trial, Rodney R. Hailey was convicted of eight counts of wire fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1343 (2012); thirty-one counts of money laundering, in violation of 18 violating the U.S.C. Clean Air § 7413(c)(2)(A) (2012) district sentenced three court years of § 1957 (2012); Act, and in various Hailey supervised and two violation of federal to 151 release, and counts 42 U.S.C. regulations. months ordered of The imprisonment, him to pay $42,196,089.78 in restitution. On appeal, Hailey does not raise any trial issues or dispute the restitution order. term of imprisonment. He challenges only the custodial For the reasons that follow, we affirm the judgment. In his lead argument, Hailey asks that we extend the holding in Alleyne v. United States, 133 S. Ct. 2151 (2013), to preclude the district court from making factual findings as relevant to sentencing enhancements, in addition to prohibiting factual mandatory findings minimum proposition. that increase sentence. We the find applicable statutory no for support this See Alleyne, 133 S. Ct. at 2163 (explaining that the Court s holding does not mean that any fact that influences judicial discretion must be found by a jury ); see also United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220, 233 (2005) ( [W]hen a trial 2 judge exercises his discretion to select a specific sentence within a defined range, the defendant has no right to a jury determination of the facts that the judge deems relevant. ); United States v. Valdez, 739 F.3d 1052, 1054 (7th Cir. 2014) (declining to interpret Alleyne as overruling Booker to require that factual issues related to the determination of the defendant s advisory Guidelines range be submitted to a jury, and expressly concluding that [t]here is no conflict between Alleyne and Booker). Hailey sentence. next challenges the reasonableness of his We review any criminal sentence, whether inside, just outside, or significantly outside the Guidelines range, for reasonableness, standard. under a deferential abuse-of-discretion United States v. King, 673 F.3d 274, 283 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 133 S. Ct. 216 (2012); see Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, procedural 46, 51 (2007). reasonableness Of review court s Guidelines calculations. Hailey determining findings as his to is that Guidelines range two-level to the first evaluate step the in district Gall, 552 U.S. at 51. maintains the course, the by district failing enhancement court to for erred make the in express number of victims of the offense, see U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual ( USSG ) § 2B1.1(b)(2)(A) (2011), and the one-level increase for 3 having a conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 1957, see USSG § 2S1.1(b)(2)(A). Generally, calculations district under court s in reviewing the the Guidelines, this legal conclusions de findings for clear error. district court novo court s review[s] and its the factual United States v. Manigan, 592 F.3d 621, 626 (4th Cir. 2010) (internal quotation marks omitted). However, because Hailey failed to object to the Guidelines calculations challenged on appeal, Hailey s claim is reviewed for plain error. United States v. Blatstein, 482 F.3d 725, 731 (4th Cir. 2007). We find no such error on this record. complains of the district court s failure Although Hailey to make factual findings regarding these two enhancements, he did not dispute them at sentencing. Pursuant to Fed. R. Crim. P. 32(i)(3)(A), the sentencing court may accept any undisputed portion of the presentence report as a finding of fact. defendant ( PSR ), objects in the to a absence finding of an in Moreover, even if a the affirmative presentence showing report that the information is not accurate, the court is free to adopt the findings of the presentence report without more specific inquiry or explanation. United States v. Love, 134 F.3d 595, 606 (4th Cir. 1998) (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted). 4 Given Hailey s failure to object to these enhancements and his related failure to affirmatively show that the PSR was inaccurate, there is no error, let alone plain error, in the district court s reliance on the PSR. Hailey next claims the court failed to adequately analyze the particular facts of his case in terms of the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) (2012) sentencing factors and to provide a sufficient explanation for the selected sentence. We disagree. Prior detailed to imposing sentence, the district court the facts of this case, focusing particularly on the sophistication and scope of the underlying fraud and Hailey s personal history and characteristics. the motivation for The court expressed its concern regarding these crimes, actions were born of blatant greed. emphasizing that Hailey s The court also noted the public interests that were harmed by Hailey s crimes, which took advantage of a well-intended government program. The sentencing transcript thus makes clear that the district court received the parties sentencing arguments, weighed the § 3553(a) sentencing factors it viewed to be the most relevant, and relied on those factors to select a sentence for Hailey. See Gall, 552 U.S. at 49-50. The court s explanation for the sentence, which was within Hailey s advisory Guidelines range, was more than sufficient. See United States v. Hernandez, 603 F.3d 267, 271-72 (4th Cir. 2010) (recognizing 5 that a within-Guidelines sentence does not require an elaborate or lengthy explanation). district court fulfilled We thus readily conclude that the its duty to analyze the sentencing factors and offer an individualized explanation for the sentence it imposed. See United States v. Lynn, 592 F.3d 572, 576, 584 (4th Cir. 2010). The final issue, then, is the substantive reasonableness of this within-Guidelines sentence. We presume that a sentence within the Guidelines range is substantively reasonable. See United States v. Bynum, 604 F.3d 161, 168-69 (4th Cir. 2010); United States v. Mendoza-Mendoza, 597 F.3d 212, 217 (4th Cir. 2010) ( [W]e may and do treat on appeal a district court s decision to impose a sentence within the Guidelines range as presumptively reasonable. ). To overcome this presumption, Hailey again asserts that the court failed to engage in individualized sentencing analysis and Government s This contests evidence argument simply as the to propriety the relevant re-packages errors, which we have rejected. of the accepting sentencing first two the issues. procedural Hailey also suggests that the court s failure to explain why it rejected his request for a twenty-four-month substantively variant unreasonable. sentence But, in renders offering the sentence an extensive explanation for the within-Guidelines sentence, the court amply 6 illustrated its reasons for rejecting the proposed variance. We thus conclude that Hailey s sentence is substantively reasonable in light of the circumstances, particularly as it was within his advisory Guidelines range. 338, 347 (2007) See Rita v. United States, 551 U.S. (upholding rebuttable presumption of reasonableness for within-Guidelines sentence). For judgment. legal before these reasons, we affirm the district court s We dispense with oral argument because the facts and contentions this court are adequately and argument presented would not in aid the the materials decisional process. AFFIRMED 7
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