United States of America v. Ricky Lamar Rhodes

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 24-4031
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
RICKY LAMAR RHODES,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, at
Greensboro. William L. Osteen, Jr., District Judge. (1:11-cr-00369-WO-4)
Submitted: July 24, 2025 Decided: July 28, 2025
Before NIEMEYER, AGEE, and HEYTENS, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
ON BRIEF: Zachary W. Ezor, TIN FULTON WALKER & OWEN, PLLC, Durham,
North Carolina, for Appellant. Sandra J. Hairston, United States Attorney, Lindsey A.
Freeman, Assistant United States Attorney, Greensboro, North Carolina, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.

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PER CURIAM:
Ricky Lamar Rhodes appeals the district court’s judgment revoking his term of
supervised release and imposing a sentence of 30 months’ imprisonment. At the revocation
hearing, Rhodes denied that he violated the term of his supervised release that prohibited
him from committing new crimes by drug trafficking (Violation 2) and misdemeanor
resisting a police officer (Violation 3). After allowing the parties to present evidence on
the two disputed violations, the district court found that Rhodes committed all five charged
violations and revoked his supervision.
On appeal, Rhodes contends the district court erroneously found that he committed
Violations 2 and 3. “We review a district court’s factual findings underlying a revocation
of supervised release for clear error and its ultimate decision to revoke a defendant’s
supervised release for abuse of discretion.” United States v. Cohen, 63 F.4th 250, 254 (4th
Cir. 2023) (citation modified).
A district court may revoke a defendant’s supervised release if it “finds by a
preponderance of the evidence that the defendant violated a condition of supervised
release.” 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3). “This standard requires only that the existence of a fact
be more probable than its nonexistence.” United States v. Padgett, 788 F.3d 370, 374 (4th
Cir. 2015) (citation modified). Based on our review of the record, we conclude that the
district court did not abuse its discretion in finding by a preponderance of the evidence that
Rhodes committed Violation 2. Because Violation 2, a Grade A violation, rendered
revocation mandatory and established Rhodes’s policy statement range, any alleged error
regarding Violation 3 would not have impacted Rhodes’s revocation judgment.

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Accordingly, we affirm the revocation judgment. We dispense with oral argument
because the facts and legal contentions are adequately presented in the materials before this
court and argument would not aid in the decisional process.
AFFIRMED

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