United States of America v. Scott Wilson

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 10-4879
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
SCOTT WILSON,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of
Maryland, at Baltimore. Richard D. Bennett, District Judge.
(1:09-cr-00036-RDB-1)
Submitted: October 25, 2011 Decided: November 4, 2011
Before NIEMEYER, AGEE, and WYNN, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Sean P. Vitrano, HAZLEHURST VITRANO, LLC, Hunt Valley, Maryland,
for Appellant. Rod J. Rosenstein, United States Attorney,
Harry M. Gruber, Assistant United States Attorney, Baltimore,
Maryland, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.

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PER CURIAM:
Scott Wilson pled guilty to one count of arson, 18
U.S.C. § 844(i) (2006). The district court departed above the
Guidelines range and sentenced Wilson as a de facto career
offender to a term of 240 months imprisonment. U.S. Sentencing
Guidelines Manual §§ 4A1.3(a), 4B1.1 (2009). Wilson appeals his
sentence, contending that the district court clearly erred in
awarding him a two-level adjustment for obstruction of justice,
USSG § 3C1.1, and that it failed to articulate sufficient
reasons for the upward departure. We affirm.
Wilson and his wife, Sarah Manning, ran a business
together at their primary residence, both before and after their
divorce, until her death in 2007. Thereafter, Wilson became
involved in a legal dispute with his wife’s family over her
estate. On October 21, 2008, the Howard County, Maryland
circuit court issued a ruling that was adverse to Wilson’s
attempt to assert a claim on the estate through the business.
On October 31, 2008, Wilson set fire to the house, resulting in
its complete destruction. Following the fire, in a tape-
recorded interview with an insurance investigator, Wilson said
he knew that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF)
was investigating the fire and that he believed his wife’s
family members were saying he had caused it. Wilson strewed
glass and screws on the driveway of Priscilla Manning Ford, his

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wife’s sister, the executor of the estate. He also called Mary
Lou Manning, his wife’s mother, threatening to kill her and her
grandchildren, and called John Manning, Jr., his wife’s brother,
and threatened to kill him.
In the presentence report, the probation officer
recommended a Guidelines range of 63-78 months, but suggested
that an upward departure under § 4A1.3 might be appropriate in
light of Wilson’s ten prior convictions for arson, none of which
were counted in his criminal history because they were outside
the applicable time period. Wilson also had an outdated prior
conviction for assault resulting from an incident where he held
his mother hostage with a shotgun. The government requested a
departure to the Guidelines range that would apply if Wilson
were a career offender, i.e., had two prior felony convictions
for a crime of violence that were countable in his criminal
history.
At sentencing, an ATF agent testified about the fire
investigation, as well as evidence uncovered during the
investigation that Wilson had responded to his first wife’s
leaving him by trying to burn their house down after locking her
in the bathroom and that Wilson had been paid to burn several
structures in 1988. The district court agreed that a departure
was appropriate and that a lesser departure than the one
requested by the government would be insufficient. The

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departure produced a Guidelines range of 210-240 months. The
court imposed the statutory maximum term of 240 months.
A sentence is reviewed for reasonableness under an
abuse-of-discretion standard. Gall v. United States, 552 U.S.
38, 51 (2007). This review requires appellate consideration of
both the procedural and substantive reasonableness of a
sentence. Id. After determining whether the district court
properly calculated the defendant’s advisory Guidelines range,
the appeals court next assesses whether the district court
considered the § 3553(a) factors, analyzed any arguments
presented by the parties, and sufficiently explained the
selected sentence. Id. at 49-50; see United States v. Lynn, 592
F.3d 572, 576 (4th Cir. 2010) (“[A]n individualized explanation
must accompany every sentence.”); United States v. Carter, 564
F.3d 325, 330 (4th Cir. 2009) (same). Finally, this court
reviews the substantive reasonableness of the sentence,
“tak[ing] into account the totality of the circumstances,
including the extent of any variance from the Guidelines range.”
United States v. Hargrove, 625 F.3d 170, 183 (4th Cir. 2010)
(internal quotation marks omitted), cert. denied, __ S. Ct. __,
2011 WL 4536007 (U.S. Oct. 3, 2011) (No. 11-5287).
Wilson first argues that no evidence supported the
district court’s conclusion that he intended to obstruct the
fire or grand jury investigation when he made post-fire threats

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to the Mannings. A district court’s determination that a
defendant obstructed justice is reviewed for clear error.
United States v. Hughes, 401 F.3d 540, 560 (4th Cir. 2005).
Guideline § 3C1.1 provides that –
If (A) the defendant willfully obstructed or impeded,
or attempted to obstruct or impede, the administration
of justice with respect to the investigation,
prosecution, or sentencing of the instant offense of
conviction, and (B) the obstructive conduct related to
. . . the defendant’s offense of conviction and any
relevant conduct . . . increase the offense level by 2
levels.
Wilson maintains that his conduct toward the Mannings
after the fire related solely to the ongoing dispute over his
former wife’s estate, which pre-dated the fire, and that the
government lacked evidence directly connecting Wilson’s post-
fire conduct to the investigation. However, the district court
did not ignore this fact. The court noted that Wilson had
engaged in conduct which expressed his hatred for the Manning
family before the fire and after the fire, and the court
considered whether the post-fire threats and intimidating
conduct related to the fire investigation. The court ultimately
found, based on Wilson’s statement to the insurance
investigator, that Wilson was aware of the fire investigation
and the Mannings’ participation in it, and that Wilson’s post-
fire threats to them were motivated in part by this new
circumstance. Application Note 4(a) to § 3C1.1 states that the

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adjustment applies to “threatening, intimidating, or otherwise
unlawfully influencing a . . . witness . . . directly or
indirectly, or attempting to do so[.]” We conclude that the
court did not clearly err in finding that the adjustment applied
in Wilson’s case.
Next, Wilson argues that his sentence is unreasonable
because the district court “failed to articulate a sufficient
justification” for the departure. A district court commits
procedural error in sentencing when it fails “to adequately
explain the chosen sentence.” Gall, 552 U.S. at 51. However,
in this case the reasons for the departure and the extent of the
departure were straightforward. “[W]here underlying past
criminal conduct demonstrates that the defendant would be
sentenced as a career offender but for the fact that one or both
of the prior predicate convictions was not counted, the
sentencing court may depart directly to the career offender
guideline range.” United States v. Myers, 589 F.3d 117, 125
(4th Cir. 2009) (quoting United States v. Cash, 983 F.2d 558,
562 (4th Cir. 1992) (internal quotation marks omitted)), cert.
denied, 130 S. Ct. 3306 (2010).
The district court considered and rejected a lesser
departure, and explained that Wilson had not rehabilitated
himself in the time that had passed since his ten arson
convictions in 1981, that he had continued to set destructive

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fires, that he continued to pose an immediate threat to the
community, and that his conduct was not excused by mental
illness or substance abuse.
In evaluating the district court’s explanation of the
sentence imposed, the district court must consider the 18 U.S.C.
§ 3553(a) (2006) factors and explain the sentence, although it
need not explicitly refer to § 3553(a) or discuss every factor
on the record. United States v. Johnson, 445 F.3d 339, 345 (4th
Cir. 2006). However, the district court “must make an
individualized assessment based on the facts presented” and
apply the “relevant § 3553(a) factors to the specific
circumstances of the case before it.” Carter, 564 F.3d at 328
(citation, internal quotation marks, and emphasis omitted). The
district court complied with these requirements, and the
resulting sentence was neither procedurally nor substantively
unreasonable.
We therefore affirm the sentence imposed by the
district court. We dispense with oral argument because the
facts and legal contentions are adequately presented in the
materials before the court and argument would not aid the
decisional process.
AFFIRMED

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