United States v. Ronald Hills

NOT PRECEDENTIAL UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT _______________ No. 21-1353 _______________ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. RONALD HILLS, Appellant _______________ On Appeal from the United States District Court For the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (D.C. No. 2-08-cr-00654-001) District Judge: Honorable Gene E.K. Pratter _______________ Submitted Under Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a) June 26, 2023 Before: JORDAN, KRAUSE and MONTGOMERY-REEVES, Circuit Judges (Filed: July 5, 2023) _______________ OPINION _______________ JORDAN, Circuit Judge.

Ronald Hills appeals the District Court’s denial of his compassionate release motion. He contends that, since the District Court considered only whether to

 This disposition is not an opinion of the full court and, pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7, does not constitute binding precedent. immediately release him and not whether some other reduction in his sentence was warranted, the Court abused its discretion. We disagree and will affirm.

I. BACKGROUND In 2011, Hills was sentenced to 444 months’ imprisonment for armed bank robbery, drug trafficking, and firearms offenses. In November 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic – and after exhausting all administrative steps with the Bureau of Prisons – Hills filed a pro se motion1 asking for a reduction of his sentence based on “extraordinary and compelling” circumstances.2 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i). In essence, he said that he should be released because his medical conditions of “severe/morbid obesity,” diabetes, and asthma, along with being over the age of 50, put him “at high risk of severe complications and possibly death” if he were to contract COVID-19 in prison. (J.A. at 45, 108.) Hills also argued that, “[a]t a minimum, the Court should grant a lesser reduction [in his sentence] to reflect Congress’s amelioration [under the First Step Act] of the draconian 25-year ‘stacking’ mandatory sentences” he had received.3 (J.A. at 97.) The District Court held that, even assuming extraordinary and compelling circumstances existed,4 “[c]onsideration of the [18 U.S.C.] § 3553(a) factors compel[led]” denial of Hills’s request. (J.A. at 16.) Hills timely appealed.5 II. DISCUSSION6 The heart of Hills’s appeal is the contention that, while the District Court considered and explicitly rejected his request for immediate release, it did not address or rule on his request for a lesser sentence than the lengthy one he received. The result, he says, was an abuse of discretion that leaves us with a “record below [that] is insufficient to allow for meaningful appellate review[.]” (Opening Br. at 16.) Not so. A court “need a sentence, but they may still consider those changes as part of the “sentence-reduction inquiry” under § 3553(a). Here, the District Court did not have the benefit of Andrews, but – as more fully explained herein – the Court did not abuse its discretion when it considered nonretroactive sentencing changes during its sentence-reduction analysis. not discuss every argument made by a litigant” when making sentencing decisions, and what the District Court did here was sufficient. United States v. Voelker, 489 F.3d 139, 154 (3d Cir. 2007) (internal quotation marks omitted).

Hills filed his compassionate release motion at the height of the pandemic. Thus, he argued mostly for immediate release to spare him from potentially fatal consequences if he were to contract COVID-19. The District Court rightly focused its decision on that request. But that does not mean the Court did not also consider some other reduction in his sentence. District Court judges are given “wide discretion” in sentencing decisions, Mistretta v. United States, 488 U.S. 361, 390 (1989), and we “traditional[ly] [grant] deference to a district court’s exercise of its sentencing discretion[,]” Williams v. United States, 503 U.S. 193, 205 (1992).

After the District Court stated that the § 3553(a) factors “compel[led]” denial of the motion, it then explained that Hills’s “serious offenses warranted a severe sentence to provide adequate deterrence, reflect the nature of the crimes, and protect the public.”7 (J.A. at 17.) What is more, the Court considered nonretroactive sentencing changes under the First Step Act and determined that, even though Hills would receive a lower sentence if he were to be sentenced today, that fact still did not warrant a sentence reduction. That determination was, in part, due to “the disparity” the Court perceived “in sentencing pre-and post-elimination of the mandatory stacking charge.” (J.A. at 16.) The Court concluded that the post-First Step Act sentencing framework “would effectively wipe away” the consequences of three of Hills’s remaining charges, and, given the severity of the crimes and the need to “protect the public,” the “§ 3553(a) factors weigh[ed] against such a sentencing reduction.” (J.A. at 16-17.)

Even though that analysis was expressed in the context of the District Court’s consideration of reducing his sentence to time served – which Hills zealously advocated for, and which made the most sense given the state of the pandemic at the time – the District Court properly exercised its discretion to determine that he was, among other things, still a danger to society and should not receive a sentence reduction. We believe consideration of the request for a reduced sentence is implicit on this record. In the end, we are not left with a “definite and firm conviction that [the Court] committed a clear error of judgment in the conclusion it reached.” United States v. Andrews, 12 F.4th 255, 259 (3d Cir. 2021). Accordingly, we conclude that the District Court did not abuse its discretion.

III. CONCLUSION For all those reasons, we will affirm the District Court’s denial of Hills’s motion for compassionate release.