United States of America v. Chauntta Lewis

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION
File Name: 13a0364n.06
No. 12-5815
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff – Appellee,
v.
CHAUNTTA LEWIS,
Defendant – Appellant.
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ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED
STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR
THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF
TENNESSEE
Before: MOORE and STRANCH, Circuit Judges; HOOD, District Judge*
JANE B. STRANCH, Circuit Judge. Defendant Chauntta Lewis pleaded guilty to a felony
charge of Racketeering – Promoting the Prostitution of a Minor in violation of 18 U.S.C. §
1952(a)(2). She was sentenced to fifty-four months in prison, and she now appeals the sentence as
substantively unreasonable. Defendant argues that the district court did not recognize its authority
to justify a sentence below the United States Sentencing Commission Guidelines based on a policy
disagreement with the Guidelines. Finding no error, we affirm Defendant’s sentence.
During the sentencing hearing, the district court calculated a Guidelines range of seventy to
eighty-seven months. After hearing testimony from the Defendant’s family members, the court
proceeded to a thorough consideration of the sentencing factors in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). The court
subtracted thirty-three months from the high end of the range to account for the Defendant’s
The Honorable Joseph Martin Hood, United States District Judge for the Eastern District*
of Kentucky, sitting by designation.

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United States v. Chauntta Lewis
No. 12-5815
substantial assistance in securing a guilty plea by her former boyfriend and testifying against another
defendant at trial. See United States Sentencing Guidelines § 5K1.1.
At the close of sentencing, defense counsel made two requests: for a split confinement, and
for the court to calculate the downward departure for substantial assistance from the low end of the
Guidelines range instead of the high end. The court rejected those requests based on its belief that
the plea agreement had already been “very, very, very beneficial” to the Defendant. Sentencing Tr.
60, R. 32 at PageID# 179. The court added that a “substantially higher [sentence] . . . could be
justified,” and that the case involved “egregious offense conduct.” Id. at 65, Page ID# 184. The
court then sentenced Defendant to fifty-four months in prison, followed by supervised release, and
defense counsel disclaimed any further objections. See United States v. Bostic, 371 F.3d 865 (6th
Cir. 2004).
On appeal, Defendant argues that the district court imposed a substantively unreasonable
sentence when it relied on two impermissible factors: (1) the court’s perceived lack of authority to
vary from the Guidelines based upon policy disagreements with the law, and (2) the court’s
perceived lack of authority to grant extreme variances. To support this argument, Defendant directs
us to the following statement that the district court made while describing the § 3553 factors:
We’re also required to consider whether or not there will be unwarranted sentencing
disparity created. In other words, if the judge in a part of the United States says . .
. they don’t believe in this law, which a judge is not allowed to do that, actually,
we’re required to uphold the law, we take an oath to do that, we don’t have that
option, and we don’t do that, but somebody says, well, I’m just going to give
everybody with these kinds of crimes . . . 30 days, that would create terrible
sentencing disparity. The same thing would be true if the judge said I’m going to
give everybody who comes in on these charges 20 years. Sentences have to make
sense when compared with the sentences of other people who are similarly situated.
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United States v. Chauntta Lewis
No. 12-5815
They have to be reconciled. They don’t have to be the same because everybody is
different, but they have to make sense, and so we really want to avoid . . .
unwarranted sentencing disparity.
Sentencing Tr. 53, R. 32 at PageID# 172.
The Government argues that we should review Defendant’s claim under the plain-error
standard because the perceived-lack-of-authority argument identifies an issue of procedural
reasonableness and the Defendant did not raise the objection following the Bostic question. See
United States v. Penson, 526 F.3d 331, 337 (6th Cir. 2008) (stating that plain-error is the standard
of review for procedural-unreasonableness arguments not raised below, while abuse-of-discretion
is the standard for substantive-unreasonableness arguments). Defendant argues that we should
review the argument under an abuse-of-discretion standard because a sentence may be considered
substantively unreasonable where it is based on an impermissible factor. See United States v.
Tolbert, 668 F.3d 798, 803 (6th Cir. 2012). We find no reason to wade into this argument because
the sentence was not unreasonable under either standard of review.
The Supreme Court has clarified that a district court has “authority to vary from the crack
cocaine Guidelines based on policy disagreement with them, and not simply based on an
individualized determination that they yield an excessive sentence in a particular case.” Spears v.
United States, 555 U.S. 261, 264 (2009). And we have held that this authority is not limited to the
crack cocaine context. See United States v. Herrera-Zuniga, 571 F.3d 568, 584 (6th Cir. 2009).
Rather, this discretion “applies to all aspects of the Guidelines.” United States v. Cole, 343 F.
App’x 109, 115 (6th Cir. 2009).
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United States v. Chauntta Lewis
No. 12-5815
Relief is not appropriate in this case, however, because we simply cannot read the district
court’s statement as implying that it had no authority to vary based on a policy disagreement. At
most, the district court acknowledged that there can be tension between the authority to vary based
on policy disagreements and the § 3553(a)(6) need-to-avoid-unwarranted-disparities factor. The
court made the statement only in the context of describing what might amount to an unwarranted
disparity, and the court did not state that § 3553(a)(6) necessarily trumps the authority to vary based
on policy concerns. Considering the challenged statement in the context of the full sentencing
transcript, moreover, reveals that the statement followed the court’s explanation of the wide range
of sentencing options available.
Finally, while not dispositive, we note that Defendant never asked the court to vary
downward based on policy disagreements with the law. Even if Defendant had done so, however,
the transcript provides no reason to believe such a request would have been granted. To the contrary,
the court made it abundantly clear throughout the hearing that it found the Guidelines range generally
appropriate given the seriousness of the crime and the need for deterrence.
For the reasons stated above, we AFFIRM the district court’s sentence.
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