United States of America v. David D. Larvie, Jr.

United States Court of Appeals
For the Eighth Circuit
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No. 24-2221
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United States of America
Plaintiff - Appellee
v.
David D. Larvie, Jr.
Defendant - Appellant
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Appeal from United States District Court
for the District of South Dakota - Southern
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Submitted: May 12, 2025
Filed: July 29, 2025
[Unpublished]
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Before COLLOTON, Chief Judge, SMITH and SHEPHERD, Circuit Judges.
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PER CURIAM.
David D. Larvie, Jr. pleaded guilty to escape from custody after tampering
with his ankle monitor during his term of home custody, in violation of 18 U.S.C.
§§ 751(a) and 4082(a). The district court1 sentenced him to 27 months’
1 The Honorable Karen E. Schreier, United States District Judge for the
District of South Dakota.

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imprisonment with no term of supervised release to follow. Larvie challenges the
substantive reasonableness of his sentence on appeal. We affirm.
Larvie was previously convicted in 2021 of being a prohibited person in
possession of a firearm and was sentenced to serve 60 months’ imprisonment. On
November 6, 2023, Larvie transitioned to home confinement to serve the remainder
of his sentence. On the evening of December 3, 2023, Larvie removed his GPS ankle
monitoring device. Early the next morning, law enforcement responded to a reported
burglary at a nearby bank. When they arrived, they found Larvie outside the
building. Witnesses told officers that Larvie had broken multiple windows at the
bank. Larvie was charged with, and ultimately pleaded guilty to, one count of escape,
in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 751(a) and 4082(a).
The presentence investigation report (PSR) determined Larvie’s total offense
level to be 11, and his criminal history score placed him in category VI. The PSR
calculated Larvie’s Guidelines range to be 27 to 33 months’ imprisonment. At
sentencing, Larvie’s counsel requested a sentence of time served with a requirement
that he complete a recovery program outside of custody. Larvie’s counsel argued
that Larvie’s actions resulted from post-traumatic stress disorder. Larvie suffered the
loss of three family members due to sudden deaths in a matter of weeks. The last of
the three, his niece, hit him particularly hard as it was a suspected homicide. This
news caused him to “beg[in] drinking alcohol” because he “was beside himself with
grief.” Appellant’s Br. at 2.
Following arguments of counsel, the district court sentenced Larvie to 27
months in custody to run concurrently with the time remaining on a prior conviction.
The court found that “a sentence within [his] [G]uideline[s] range [was]
appropriate.” R. Doc. 41, at 25. The district court noted that Larvie’s escape occurred
only one month into his “opportunity to leave the Bureau of Prisons’ custody and
come back into society.” Id. at 23. Additionally, while on home detention, Larvie
“picked up two new charges” pending in state court, and the instant conviction would
be his “seventh felony conviction.” Id. at 23–24. The district court acknowledged

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Larvie’s “traumatic” loss of three family members but reasoned that “the way to
address that is to not start drinking heavily and then committing, or allegedly
committing, a new crime.” Id. at 24. The district court agreed that a recovery
program “is something that would help [Larvie] transition from being in custody to
being out.” Id. However, the court reasoned that “because this escape happened
within a month of [Larvie] going into home confinement,” it did not feel that
“sentencing [Larvie] to time served here is the appropriate punishment, especially
since [he was] in Criminal History Category VI.” Id. at 25.
“We review the substantive reasonableness of a sentence for abuse of
discretion.” United States v. Patterson, 131 F.4th 901, 912 (8th Cir. 2025). “A
district court abuses its discretion if it 1) fails to consider a significant factor it should
have, 2) gives significant weight to an improper or irrelevant factor, or 3) considers
the appropriate factors but commits a clear error of judgment in weighing them.”
United States v. Soliz, 857 F.3d 781, 783 (8th Cir. 2017) (citing United States v.
Feemster, 572 F.3d 455, 461 (8th Cir. 2009) (en banc)). “The district court has wide
latitude to weigh the [18 U.S.C] § 3553(a) factors in each case and assign some
factors greater weight than others in determining an appropriate sentence.” United
States v. Pierre, 912 F.3d 1137, 1144 (8th Cir. 2019) (internal quotation marks
omitted). “A sentence within the Guidelines range is presumptively reasonable.” Id.
On appeal, Larvie argues that the district court abused its discretion because
it failed to give sufficient weight to his mitigating circumstances. Here, Larvie’s
sentence was within the Guidelines range and is presumptively reasonable. The
district court expressly acknowledged his mitigating factors but found that Larvie’s
extensive criminal history and recent escape outweighed them. See United States v.
Frenchone One Horn, 62 F.4th 461, 463 (8th Cir. 2023) (“[A] district court’s choice
to assign relatively greater weight to the nature and circumstances of the offense
than to the mitigating personal characteristics of the defendant is well within its wide
latitude in weighing relevant factors.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). “The
court weighed the relevant information differently than [Larvie] would have hoped
. . . but there was no ‘clear error of judgment.’” United States v. Scherer, 114 F.4th

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987, 993 (8th Cir. 2024) (quoting United States v. Clark, 998 F.3d 363, 369 (8th Cir.
2021)). The district court did not abuse its discretion in imposing Larvie’s 27-month
sentence.
Therefore, we affirm.
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