In United States v. Steiger, No. 22-10742 (July 16, 2024) (CJ Pryor, J. Pryor, Coogler of N.D. Ala.), the Court (on remand from the en banc Court) affirmed Mr. Steiger’s twenty-year-prison sentence, which the district court imposed upon revoking Mr. Steiger’s original sentence of probation for four wire-fraud-related convictions.
The revocation stemmed from Mr. Steiger’s intervening state-court conviction of second-degree murder.
The Court held that Mr. Steiger failed to demonstrate plain error with respect to the prison sentence’s procedural reasonableness. This is because the district court stated that it had considered the following: (1) every 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factor; (2) the applicable guidelines and policy statements from the Sentencing Commission; (3) court decisions; (4) the issues presented in the underlying case; (5) evidence presented at the revocation hearing, part of which concerned the nature and circumstances of the offense, as set forth in § 3553(a)(1); and (6) statements Mr. Steiger made in his defense. Additionally, the record indicated that the district court was aware of argument that the guidelines sentence was inadequate because of the seriousness of Mr. Steiger’s probation violation. Although the district court never explain why it had rejected Mr. Steiger’s request for a time-served sentence, the Court deemed it sufficient that the district court had relied on the record while making clear that it considered the parties’ arguments and the § 3553(a) factors.
The Court likewise held that Mr. Steiger failed to demonstrate plain error with respect to the prison sentence’s substantive reasonableness. Again, the district court had addressed the § 3553(a) factors, including having specifically mentioned that it considered evidence concerning the nature and circumstances of the second-degree murder. Also, the district court ordered that the sentences for each wire-fraud-related conviction run concurrently, rather than consecutively to each other.
202210742.op2.pdf (uscourts.gov)
https://defensenewsletter.blogspot.com/2024/07/steiger-no-plain-error-concerning.html