Background
Ijaz Oliver pleaded guilty without a plea agreement to being a felon in possession of a firearm in violation of Section ninety-two two of Title eighteen of the United States Code. The district court sentenced him to eighteen months of imprisonment followed by three years of supervised release. Oliver’s counsel filed a brief pursuant to Anders v. California stating there were no meritorious issues for appeal but questioning the denial of a downward variant sentence and the placement of the sentence at the high end of the advisory Sentencing Guidelines range.
The court’s reasoning
The court reviewed the reasonableness of the sentence under Section thirty-five fifty-three of Title eighteen using an abuse-of-discretion standard. The court first evaluated procedural reasonableness and found the district court correctly calculated the Guidelines range, considered the statutory factors, and provided a meaningful explanation for the chosen sentence. The court then assessed substantive reasonableness and concluded that nothing in the record rebutted the presumption that a sentence within a properly calculated Guidelines range is reasonable. The court found the district court reasonably arrived at the sentence after assessing the circumstances of the case.
We review the reasonableness of a sentence under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) using an abuse-of-discretion standard, regardless of whether the sentence is inside, just outside, or significantly outside the Guidelines range.
United States v. Nance, 957 F.3d 204, 212 (4th Cir. 2020)
What it means going forward
The affirmation reinforces the standard of review for sentencing appeals where counsel files an Anders brief and confirms that sentences within the advisory Guidelines range are presumptively reasonable absent a showing of unreasonableness.
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