United States v. Shahid Tahir

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION

File Name: 25a0131n.06 Case No. 24-1279

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

FILED Mar 06, 2025

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ) KELLY L. STEPHENS, Clerk

)

Plaintiff-Appellee, )

) ON APPEAL FROM THE v. ) UNITED STATES DISTRICT

) COURT FOR THE EASTERN SHAHID TAHIR, ) DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN

Defendant-Appellant. )

) OPINION Before: COLE, WHITE, and MATHIS, Circuit Judges.

COLE, Circuit Judge. A district court sentenced Shahid Tahir for conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud. After a retroactive amendment to the United States Sentencing Guidelines, Tahir moved for a sentence reduction under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2). The district court determined he was ineligible and denied his motion. Because we recently concluded that United States Sentencing Guideline § 4C1.1(a)(10) specifies two necessary conditions for eligibility under the amendment, one of which Tahir lacks, we affirm.

I.

Shahid Tahir pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1349. At sentencing, his total offense level was 33. He received an adjustment for being an “organizer or leader of a criminal activity that involved five or more participants or was otherwise extensive” under USSG § 3B1.1(a). Tahir had no criminal history points, so his criminal history category was I. Accordingly, his advisory guidelines range was 135 to 168 months’ imprisonment. In 2016, the district court sentenced Tahir to 126 months in prison.

After Tahir’s sentencing, the United States Sentencing Commission promulgated a new guideline, USSG § 4C1.1, to provide a two-point reduction in the offense level for defendants who received no criminal history points at sentencing, otherwise referred to as “zero-point offenders.” Notice of Final Action Regarding Amendment 821, 88 Fed. Reg. 60534, 60534–36 (Sept. 1, 2023). To be eligible for the reduction, the defendant must meet ten criteria set forth in § 4C1.1(a).1 USSG Amend. 821, Pt. B. This appeal concerns only the tenth criterion: “[T]he defendant did not receive an adjustment under § 3B1.1 (Aggravating Role) and was not engaged in a continuing criminal enterprise, as defined in 21 U.S.C. § 848.” USSG § 4C1.1(a)(10).2 Made retroactively applicable, § 4C1.1 can serve as the basis for a motion for a sentence reduction pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2). USSG Amend. 825; USSG § 1B1.10.

Arguing that he qualified for a two-level reduction based on the amendment, Tahir moved for a sentence reduction under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2). While acknowledging his receipt of an aggravating role adjustment, he contended that “a person must both receive an adjustment under § 3B1.1 and have engaged in a continuing criminal enterprise [] under § 848 to be disqualified for the ‘zero-point offender’ reduction.” (Mot. for Sentence Reduction, R. 417, PageID 3318.) The government opposed his motion, arguing, in part, that the aggravating role adjustment independently rendered him ineligible. The probation office also advised that Tahir would be ineligible for the same reason.

The district court denied Tahir’s motion in a form order that stated only that Tahir’s motion was “denied.” This appeal followed. While the district court offered no explanation for its decision, both Tahir and the government attribute the denial to a legal conclusion that Tahir’s aggravating role adjustment rendered him ineligible for the zero-point offender reduction.

II.

We review the district court’s legal determination of a defendant’s eligibility for a sentence reduction de novo. United States v. Webb, 760 F.3d 513, 517 (6th Cir. 2014).

After briefing in this case was complete, we decided United States v. Ashrafkhan,--- F.4th ----, 2025 WL 670436 (6th Cir. 2025). That case presented the same question as this appeal: whether a defendant with an aggravating role adjustment was precluded from the zero-point offender reduction, despite not having engaged in a continuing criminal enterprise. Id. at *2. We concluded that “§ 4C1.1(a)(10) creates an eligibility checklist and specifies two necessary conditions for eligibility under the amendment: a defendant must have not received an aggravating role adjustment and a defendant must not have engaged in a continuing criminal enterprise to meet the criterion. Failure to satisfy either condition renders the defendant ineligible.” Id. at *3.

Since Tahir received an aggravating role adjustment, he cannot meet the requirements of § 4C1.1(a)(10). Tahir is, therefore, ineligible for a reduction under Amendment 821. And since, as we explained in Ashrafkhan, § 4C1.1(a)(10) is susceptible to only one possible construction, we reject Tahir’s efforts to invoke the rule of lenity. See id. at *6; United States v. Shabani, 513 U.S. 10, 17 (1994) (“The rule of lenity [] applies only when, after consulting traditional canons of statutory construction, we are left with an ambiguous statute.”)

III.

For the same reasons set forth in Ashrafkhan, we affirm.