United States v. Michael Davis, No. 17-3439 (8th Cir. 2018)
Annotate this CaseCourt Description: Per Curiam - Before Smith, Chief Judge, and Melloy and Stras, Circuit Judges] Criminal case - Sentencing. Above-guidelines sentence imposed upon the revocation of defendant's supervised release was substantively reasonable; in light of the nature of the violations and the fact that a shorter sentence had proved ineffective, the sentence imposed was not an abuse of the district court's discretion.
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United States Court of Appeals For the Eighth Circuit ___________________________ No. 17-3439 ___________________________ United States of America lllllllllllllllllllllPlaintiff - Appellee v. Michael Davis lllllllllllllllllllllDefendant - Appellant ____________ Appeal from United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa - Waterloo ____________ Submitted: September 25, 2018 Filed: October 16, 2018 [Unpublished] ____________ Before SMITH, Chief Judge, MELLOY and STRAS, Circuit Judges. ____________ PER CURIAM. Michael Davis violated the terms of supervised release by breaking the rules at his halfway house, failing to provide urine samples, and peeling off his drug-detecting sweat patches. He argues that his twelve-month prison sentence is unreasonably long. In setting Davis’s sentence, the district court1 emphasized that he had lied under oath about tampering with his sweat patches and that it had already revoked his supervised release once. His previous violations had resulted in a ten-month prison sentence, and he committed the first of his new violations just a few months after he was released. Relying on the statutory sentencing factors, see 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3), the court concluded that another sentence of ten months, which was at the high end of the range recommended by the Sentencing Guidelines, would have been too short. We conclude that Davis’s sentence is substantively reasonable. See United States v. Feemster, 572 F.3d 455, 461–62 (8th Cir. 2009) (en banc) (explaining that we review sentences for an abuse of discretion). The court was not required to discuss the sentencing factors in greater detail, particularly when it was already familiar with the case from presiding over Davis’s initial sentencing and previous revocation proceeding. See, e.g., United States v. Franklin, 397 F.3d 604, 606–07 (8th Cir. 2005). Nor was it an abuse of discretion to impose a sentence above the Guidelines range in light of the nature of Davis’s violations and the fact that a shorter sentence had proved ineffective. See, e.g., United States v. Ford, 854 F.3d 1030, 1032 (8th Cir. 2017). We accordingly affirm. See 8th Cir. R. 47A. ______________________________ 1 The Honorable Linda R. Reade, United States District Judge for the Northern District of Iowa. -2-
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