USA v. Handlon, No. 22-50075 (5th Cir. 2022)
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Defendant is serving a federal sentence of 240 months’ imprisonment for conspiring to possess and distribute methamphetamine and hydrocodone. Since July 2020, Defendant has filed three motions for compassionate release. The district court rejected Defendant’s first motion because he had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies, and denied Defendant’s second motion on the merits on November 18, 2020. More than a year later, Defendant filed a third motion for compassionate release. The district court denied the third motion “for the same reasons stated in” its November 18, 2020 order. Defendant now appeals the district court’s order denying his third motion.
The Fifth Circuit the district court’s order denying Defendant’s motion for compassionate release and remanded for reconsideration. The court explained that while Defendant’s s third compassionate-release motion may have little chance of success, judges have an obligation to say enough that the public can be confident that cases are decided in a reasoned way. Here, since the district court’s original order did not explain how it balanced the Section 3553(a) factors or its specific factual conclusions as to any of those factors, it is impossible to tell how the district court would have considered this new information.
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