Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Michigan at Grand Rapids.
No. 1:06-cr-00030-1—Robert J. Jonker, District Judge.
Argued: March 11, 2020
Decided and Filed: May 7, 2020
Before: GIBBONS, McKEAGUE, and WHITE Circuit Judges.
_________________________
OPINION
_________________________
JULIA SMITH GIBBONS, Circuit Judge. Benjamin Foreman appeals the district court’s
order granting his motion for a sentence reduction pursuant to the First Step Act of 2018
(“First Step Act”). He raises two arguments on appeal. First, he argues that the First Step Act
requires district courts to conduct a plenary resentencing of any defendant deemed eligible for
relief under the law. Specifically, Foreman contends that the district court erred by refusing to
grant his requests for an in-person hearing and reconsideration of his career offender status.
Second, Foreman argues that his reduced sentence is unreasonable. He maintains that, because
he should no longer be classified as a career offender, the district court unreasonably varied
upward from his true Guidelines range. Foreman also contends that the district court erred when
it allegedly failed to recognize that he was eligible for a reduced term of supervised release.
As we have previously concluded, nothing in the First Step Act entitles a defendant to a
plenary resentencing. Moreover, we hold that the district court properly imposed Foreman’s
reduced sentence. In doing so, we find that we have authority under 18 U.S.C. § 3742(a)(1) to
review Foreman’s claim that the district court’s sentencing determination was unreasonable.
Although our precedents indicate that reasonableness review does not apply to certain sentencereduction proceedings, we find that the First Step Act is distinguishable and decline to extend
those precedents to First Step Act proceedings. We nevertheless hold that Foreman’s reduced
sentence was reasonable. We therefore affirm. |