United States of America v. Michael Fields

NOT PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
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No. 24-2900
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
v.
MICHAEL FIELDS,
Appellant
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On Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of New Jersey
(D.C. Criminal No. 1:24-cr-00036-001)
District Judge: Honorable Christine P. O’Hearn
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Submitted Under Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a)
September 16, 2025
Before: BIBAS, MONTGOMERY-REEVES, and AMBRO, Circuit Judges.
(Opinion filed: September 25, 2025)
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OPINION
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MONTGOMERY-REEVES, Circuit Judge.
Michael Fields pleaded guilty to three offenses relating to his possession of
firearms as a convicted felon and his possession of controlled substances with an intent to
 This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7 does not
constitute binding precedent.

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distribute.1 Fields and the Government entered a plea agreement that stipulated to a
sentencing range of 84 to 108 months of imprisonment. The District Court calculated a
Guidelines range of 262 to 327 months of imprisonment. But the District Court varied
downward, adjusted Fields’s Guidelines range to 144 to 165 months, and sentenced
Fields to 150 months of imprisonment. Fields appealed.2
Fields argues that the District Court’s sentence is substantively unreasonable. We
review Fields’s substantive reasonableness argument for an abuse of discretion. United
States v. Tomko, 562 F.3d 558, 567 (3d Cir. 2009) (en banc). That requires us to affirm
“unless no reasonable sentencing court would have imposed the same sentence on
[Fields] for the reasons the district court provided.” Id. at 568. A sentencing court acts
reasonably when “the record as a whole reflects rational and meaningful consideration of
the factors” in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). Id. (quoting United States v. Grier, 475 F.3d 556,
571 (3d Cir. 2007) (en banc)). We also remain cognizant that “what is ‘reasonable’ under
. . . the abuse-of-discretion standard by which [sentencing judgments] must be judged
limits the debate and gives district courts broad latitude in sentencing.” Id. (quotation
omitted).
1 Count one charged Fields with possession of firearms and ammunition by a convicted
felon, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1); count two charged Fields with possession of controlled
substances with intent to distribute, 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), (b)(1)(C); and count three
charged Fields with possession of firearms in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime,
18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A)(i).
2 The District Court had jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 3231. We have jurisdiction under
28 U.S.C. § 1291 and 18 U.S.C. § 3742.

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Fields acknowledges that the District Court thoroughly reviewed the § 3553(a)
factors. He instead argues that it should have varied further downward. Fields argues
that sentencing disparities associated with cocaine base alone justified the District
Court’s downward variance to an adjusted Guidelines range of 144 to 165 months; thus,
other mitigating circumstances under § 3553(a) supported a lower sentence than the 150-
month sentence imposed.3 Specifically, Fields argues that the District Court discounted
how the COVID-19 pandemic led to Fields becoming unemployed and thereby
contributed to his commission of the underlying offenses.
We disagree with Fields that no reasonable sentencing court would have sentenced
him to 150 months of imprisonment. The District Court, among other things,
(1) reviewed Fields’s extensive criminal history; (2) discussed the serious nature of the
offenses; (3) acknowledged Fields’s childhood trauma and recent tragedies such as the
murder of his daughter and significant other; (4) explained why Fields’s successful
completion of a reentry program cut both ways because he quickly returned to
committing serious crimes; and (5) decreased Fields’s offense score not only to eliminate
any disparity associated with cocaine base but also to address Fields’s mitigating
circumstances. The District Court acknowledged how the COVID-19 pandemic caused
3 Cocaine and cocaine base (that is, “powder” and “crack” cocaine) yield differing
treatment under the Guidelines, which “requir[e] one hundred times more powder[]
cocaine than crack cocaine to trigger inclusion in a particular range.” United States v.
Gunter, 462 F.3d 237, 240 (3d Cir. 2006) (citing 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)). District judges
may “reject and vary categorically from the crack cocaine Guidelines,” Spears v. United
States, 555 U.S. 261, 266 (2009) (per curiam), to remedy “the crack/powder disparity . . .
even in a mine-run case,” Kimbrough v. United States, 552 U.S. 85, 110 (2007).

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Fields to become unemployed. But the District Court balanced that fact with the need to
protect the public from the serious nature of the offenses and accounted for the need for
general and specific deterrence given Fields’s recidivism. All said, we cannot say that
the District Court abused its discretion when imposing Fields’s sentence given its careful
and meticulous consideration of the § 3553(a) factors. Tomko, 562 F.3d at 568. Thus,
we will affirm the judgment of the District Court.

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