US v. Chad McDonald, No. 14-4004 (4th Cir. 2014)
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UNPUBLISHED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT No. 14-4004 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. CHAD MCDONALD, Defendant - Appellant. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, at Charleston. Thomas E. Johnston, District Judge. (2:10-cr-00122-2) Submitted: June 12, 2014 Decided: June 24, 2014 Before WILKINSON and NIEMEYER, Circuit Judges, and DAVIS, Senior Circuit Judge. Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion. Michael D. Payne, REDMAN & PAYNE, PLLC, Charleston, West Virginia, for Appellant. R. Booth Goodwin II, United States Attorney, C. Haley Bunn, Assistant United States Attorney, Charleston, West Virginia, for Appellee. Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit. PER CURIAM: Chad imposing a McDonald appeals twenty-four-month the term district of court s judgment imprisonment following McDonald s second revocation of supervised release. He argues that the sentence imprisonment imposed authorized by exceeds 18 the U.S.C. maximum term § 3583(e)(3) of (2012). Finding no error, we affirm. In stolen 2011, firearms, 924(a)(2) twelve McDonald in (2012). months pleaded violation The of district imprisonment, supervised release. guilty 18 court to U.S.C. disposing §§ sentenced followed by of 922(j) and McDonald to three years of In July 2013, the district court revoked McDonald s supervised release and imposed a four-month term of incarceration release. and a new thirty-two-month term of supervised McDonald began serving the second term of supervised release in September 2013. In petition release. October alleging 2013, violations the of probation the officer conditions of filed a supervised After a revocation hearing, the district court found that McDonald had violated the conditions of supervised release and revoked his release. * The district court, ruling that it was not required to reduce the statutory maximum available by the * McDonald does not challenge this finding on appeal. 2 duration of McDonald s previous revocation sentence, imposed the two-year statutory maximum. McDonald argues that his sentence exceeds the statutory maximum because the district court failed to aggregate his prior revocation sentence, which would lower the available maximum sentence. He asserts that 2003 revisions to § 3583 did not alter this statutory requirement and were intended to ensure that imprisonment was available for every supervised questions of release violation. We review interpretation. (4th Cir. 2013). de novo statutory United States v. Under Seal, 709 F.3d 257, 261 The starting point for any issue of statutory interpretation is the language of the statute itself. Gilbert v. Residential Funding LLC, 678 F.3d 271, 276 (4th Cir. 2012) (alteration and internal quotation marks omitted). In cases where the language of a statute . . . has a plain and ordinary meaning, [statute] omitted). courts as it need is look no further written. Id. and should (internal apply quotation the marks Where a word is not defined by statute, we normally construe it in accord with its ordinary or natural meaning. Smith v. United States, 508 U.S. 223, 228 (1993). When a district court revokes a term of supervised release and imposes a term of imprisonment, the defendant . . . may not be required to serve on any such revocation more than 3 . . . 2 years in prison if such offense is a class C or D felony. 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3). Following the 2003 revisions, our sister Circuits have concluded that the ordinary meaning of the phrase on any such revocation at the end of § 3583(e)(3) refers to each discrete revocation of supervised release, not to the aggregate imprisonment. amount of the defendant s revocation United States v. Shabazz, 633 F.3d 342, 345 (5th Cir. 2011); see United States v. Perry, 743 F.3d 238, 241-42 (7th Cir. 2014) (collecting cases). While the decisions of other Circuits are not binding, their reasoning is persuasive, and we conclude that the district court did not err in failing to aggregate the current sentence with the prior four-month term. Accordingly, we affirm the district court s judgment. We dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal contentions are adequately presented in the material before this court and argument will not aid the decisional process. AFFIRMED 4
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