Opinion
22-10029 22-10030
10-24-2022
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. ROBERT ZANDER SEATON, Defendant-Appellant. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. ROBERT ZANDER SEATON, Defendant-Appellant.
NOT FOR PUBLICATION
Submitted October 20, 2022 San Francisco, California
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California D.C. Nos. 3:17-cr-00244-WHO-24, 3:18-cr-00604-WHO-1 William Horsley Orrick, District Judge, Presiding
Before: Ronald Lee Gilman, Consuelo M. Callahan, and Lawrence VanDyke, Circuit Judges.
The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).
MEMORANDUM
Robert Zander Seaton appeals the district court's denial of his second motion for compassionate release, which he filed pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i). Because the parties are familiar with the facts of the case, we do not review them here. For the reasons that follow, we affirm the judgment of the district court.
We review a district court's denial of a motion for compassionate release under the abuse-of-discretion standard. United States v. Aruda, 993 F.3d 797, 799 (9th Cir. 2021) (per curiam). "A district court abuses its discretion if it fails to apply the correct legal standard or if its application of the correct standard is 'illogical, implausible, or without support in inferences that may be drawn from facts in the record.'" United States v. Estrada, 904 F.3d 854, 862 (9th Cir. 2018) (quoting United States v. Hinkson, 585 F.3d 1247, 1251 (9th Cir. 2009) (en banc)). We note at the outset that the district court's order denying Seaton's second motion for compassionate release incorporates by reference each of its prior orders, so we will consider the substance of the court's most recent decision as well its previous compassionate-release decisions.
Seaton first argues that the district court erred by conflating § 3582(c)(1)(A)'s "extraordinary-and-compelling" inquiry with the statute's directive to consider the sentencing factors set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). But we do not read the court's decision as improperly merging the compassionate-release statute's inquiries. Rather, the court made clear that its denial of Seaton's motions for compassionate release "hinged on [its] consideration of the . . . § 3553(a) factors." We are thus tasked with determining whether the court provided legally sufficient reasoning in its analysis of those sentencing considerations.
The district court, in applying the § 3553(a) factors, observed that the following considerations counseled against early release: Seaton had "served only a quarter of his 120-month sentence," which was already well below the bottom of his Guidelines' range; he had "committed a second drug trafficking offense while on pretrial release"; and he "was dishonest in a program that offered the promise of avoiding incarceration as long as he was honest and met its conditions to address his addiction and criminal thinking issues." (emphasis in original). Finally, despite the Bureau of Prisons' belief that Seaton presented a minimal recidivism risk, the court determined that Seaton's likelihood of recidivism remained substantial due to Seaton's criminal history and the limited amount of time that he has served as a percentage of his sentence. On this record, we are satisfied that the court gave due consideration to the § 3553(a) factors.
Seaton next challenges the district court's finding that there were no extraordinary and compelling circumstances warranting compassionate release. He contends that the court's determination was an abuse of discretion because the court failed to "fully consider the most up-to-date information[,] including . . . [his] deteriorating physical health." But because the court reasonably concluded that early release would not be consistent with the § 3553(a) factors, we need not address the court's finding that Seaton's circumstances did not rise to the "extraordinary-and-compelling" level. See United States v. Keller, 2 F.4th 1278, 1284 (9th Cir. 2021) (explaining that a "district court that properly denies compassionate release need not evaluate each step" (emphasis in original)).
AFFIRMED.
The Honorable Ronald Lee Gilman, United States Circuit Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, sitting by designation.