United States v. Fabian

── United States v. Fabian ── Case No.: 22-1247 Court: Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Date: March 25, 2026 Category: General 22-1247-cr United States v. Fabian UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT August Term, 2025 Argued: September 29, 2025 Decided: March 25, 2026 Docket No. 22-1247-cr UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Appellee, — v. — RAFAEL ANTONIO FABIAN, Defendant-Appellant.* B e f o r e: LIVINGSTON, Chief Judge, LYNCH, and MENASHI, Circuit Judges. * The Clerk of Court is respectfully directed to amend the official caption in this case to conform to the caption above.  Defendant-Appellant Rafael Antonio Fabian appeals from a judgment of conviction for distributing and possessing with intent to distribute crack cocaine. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison, well below the United States Sentencing Guidelines recommendation of life. Fabian challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to convict him, the district court’s jury instructions, the reasonableness of his sentence, and the standard conditions of supervised release imposed upon him. For the reasons below, we conclude that the evidence was sufficient for the jury to have found Fabian guilty, the court’s instructions to the jury were proper, and the sentence was reasonable. While this appeal was pending, however, we clarified that, at sentencing, a district court must make a defendant aware of standard conditions of supervised release that it intends to impose. It is undisputed that the district court did not do so in this case. Accordingly, we AFFIRM the district court’s judgment except for the imposition of standard conditions of supervised release, which we VACATE. We thus REMAND the case to the district court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. TIMOTHY P. MURPHY, Federal Public Defender’s Office, Western District of New York, Buffalo, NY, for Defendant-Appellant. AMY BUSA (Drew Rolle, on the brief), Assistant United States Attorneys, for Joseph Nocella, Jr., United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, New York, NY, for Appellee. GERARD E. LYNCH, Circuit Judge: Defendant-Appellant Rafael Antonio Fabian appeals from the May 26, 2022, judgment of conviction entered in the Eastern District of New York (Dora L. Irizarry, J.). Fabian was found guilty of conspiring to distribute and possess with 2 intent to distribute crack cocaine. Though the United States Sentencing Guidelines (the “Guidelines”) recommended life imprisonment, the district court sentenced Fabian to 15 years.1 On appeal, Fabian challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to support the conviction, the instructions and guidance that the district court gave the jury, the procedural and substantive reasonableness of his sentence, and the standard conditions of supervised release imposed upon him. For the reasons below, we conclude that the evidence was sufficient to support the jury’s verdict, the court’s instructions to the jury were proper, and the sentence was reasonable. While this appeal was pending, however, we clarified that, at sentencing, a district court must make a defendant aware of standard conditions of supervised release that it intends to impose. It is undisputed that the district court did not do so in this case. Accordingly, we AFFIRM the district court’s judgment except for the court’s imposition of standard conditions of supervised release, which we 1 Fabian was sentenced under the 2021 version of the