5th Cir.

United States v. Charleston

July 14, 2026 ·25-60639 ·Per Curiam · By James Taylor

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the conviction and sentence of Omar Deangelo Charleston. The court rejected arguments regarding jury pool composition, sufficiency of evidence, prosecutorial misconduct, and substantive reasonableness of the sentence.

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Background

Omar Deangelo Charleston appealed his within-guidelines sentence of one hundred twenty-one months of imprisonment following guilty verdict convictions for kidnapping, interstate domestic violence, and stalking. The appeal raised issues concerning jury pool representation, sufficiency of the evidence, prosecutorial misconduct, and the substantive reasonableness of the sentence.

The court’s reasoning

The court held that the claim regarding jury pool composition was time-barred under Section eighteen hundred sixty-seven of Title twenty-eight of the United States Code. Regarding sufficiency challenges, the court found the defendant failed to show insufficient evidence to support the convictions for kidnapping and interstate domestic abuse. The court determined that arguments regarding prosecutorial misconduct were either not plain error or deemed abandoned due to inadequate briefing. Finally, the court applied an abuse of discretion standard to the sentence and found the defendant failed to demonstrate that the sentence accounted for irrelevant factors or represented a clear error of judgment.

What it means going forward

The judgment of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi is affirmed, upholding the defendant’s conviction and one hundred twenty-one-month prison sentence.