Criminal Practice – Guilty Plea – Guidelines Calculations

Listen to this article

The district court fully complied with Fed. R. Crim. P. Rule 11 in accepting the guilty plea and we discerned no error in the calculation of the advisory Guidelines range.

We affirmed the district court’s order.

Shannon Layne Myers pleaded guilty, without a plea agreement, to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and to distribute methamphetamine and heroin; possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine and heroin; two counts of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine; aiding and abetting the possession with intent to distribute heroin; three counts of possession of firearms and ammunition by a felon; and two counts of possession and one count of brandishing a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. The district court sentenced Myers to 360 months’ imprisonment. On appeal, counsel filed a brief under Anders v. California, 386 U.S. 738 (1967), stating that there are no meritorious grounds for appeal, thoroughly discussing the plea and sentencing proceedings, but pointing to no specific errors.

Before accepting a guilty plea, the district court must conduct a colloquy with the defendant to “ensure that the defendant understands the nature of the charges to which the plea is offered, any mandatory minimum penalty, the maximum possible penalty, and the various rights the defendant is relinquishing by pleading guilty.” United States v. Williams, 811 F.3d 621, 622 (4th Cir. 2016). The court also must determine that the plea is voluntary, Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(b)(2), and supported by an independent factual basis, Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(b)(3). Our review of the Fed. R. Crim. P. 11 hearing transcript revealed no error. The district court fully complied with Rule 11 in accepting Myers’s guilty plea. Moreover, the record demonstrates that Myers was competent, that he entered his plea knowingly and voluntarily, and that a factual basis supported each count of conviction.

Next, our review of the record confirmed the procedural reasonableness of Myers’s sentence. The district court adopted the uncontested Guidelines calculations set forth in the presentence report, and we discerned no error in the calculation of Myers’s advisory Guidelines range on the drug and § 922(g) counts. The district court afforded the parties an opportunity to argue for an appropriate sentence and heard Myers’s allocution. The district court considered the § 3553(a) factors and Myers’s mitigating arguments and provided a reasoned explanation for the sentence. Finally, because nothing in the record undermines the presumption of substantive reasonableness afforded the selected sentence, we concluded that Myers’s sentence is substantively reasonable.

Affirmed.

United States v. Shannon Layne Myers (Lawyers’ Weekly No. 003-031-25, 5 pp.) (Per Curiam) Appealed from the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, at Rock Hill (Sherri A. Lydon, J.) On Brief: Ray Coit Yarborough, Jr., Law Office of Ray Coit Yarborough, Jr., Florence, South Carolina, for Appellant; Christopher Braden Schoen, Assistant United States Attorney, Office of the United States Attorney, Greenville, South Carolina, for Appellee. U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Unpublished