Six-Month Longer Sentence Made Consecutive to State Sentence Not Vindictive

US v. Singletary: In 2019, following participation in an armed robbery, Singletary was sentenced to 60 months on a Hobbs Act robbery charge and a consecutive 84-month sentence on a firearm brandishing charge. He appealed, challenging the application of a pair of supervised release conditions. Successful, the Fourth Circuit vacated his entire sentence, remanding for further proceedings. At resentencing, the district court imposed an extra six months of imprisonment on the robbery charge and ordered his federal sentence to run consecutively to a state sentence imposed after his initial federal sentencing (those state charges had been pending at the time). As a result, Singletary’s sentence was effectively increased by about 11 years.

On appeal, the Fourth Circuit affirmed Singletary’s new sentence. The court first concluded that Singletary’s appeal was not covered by a waiver of his right to appeal his sentence in his plea agreement because the argument he was making – that his new sentence was the product of vindictive conduct by the district court – did not fall within the scope of the waiver. However, the court ultimately held that the presumption of vindictiveness created by the lengthened sentence had been rebutted. That was due to two factors relied upon by the district court in imposing the new sentence. The first was Singletary’s poor disciplinary record in prison, which led the district court to doubt the sincerity of Singletary’s initial remorse at sentencing. The second was the new state convictions, which the district court did not consider when first imposing sentence because they were merely pending charges at the time.