Background
Lajuan House appealed after the district court revoked his supervised release and imposed an above-Guidelines-range sentence of twenty-four months in prison with no term of supervised release to follow. House argued that the district court imposed a substantively unreasonable revocation sentence.
The court’s reasoning
The court concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion in sentencing House. The opinion noted that while House disagreed with the weight given to certain sentencing factors, there was no indication the district court failed to consider a relevant factor, gave significant weight to an improper or irrelevant factor, or committed a clear error of judgment in weighing relevant factors.
What it means going forward
The decision reinforces that appellate courts will not reverse supervised release revocations based solely on disagreement with the district court’s weighing of sentencing factors.