United States v. Cecil Jackson

── United States v. Cecil Jackson ── Court: Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Date: April 27, 2026 Category: General USCA4 Appeal: 25-4398 Doc: 25 Filed: 04/27/2026 Pg: 1 of 4 UNPUBLISHED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT No. 25-4398 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. CECIL EDWARD JACKSON, Defendant - Appellant. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, at Charlotte. Max O. Cogburn, Jr., District Judge. (3:90-cr-00085-MOC-DCK-1) Submitted: April 23, 2026 Decided: April 27, 2026 Before NIEMEYER, THACKER, and HARRIS, Circuit Judges. Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion. ON BRIEF: Ryan M. Prescott, PRESCOTT LAW, PLLC, Winterville, Georgia, for Appellant. Amy Elizabeth Ray, Assistant United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Asheville, North Carolina, for Appellee. Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit. USCA4 Appeal: 25-4398 Doc: 25 Filed: 04/27/2026 Pg: 2 of 4 PER CURIAM: Cecil Edward Jackson appeals the district court’s judgment revoking his supervised release and sentencing him to time-served, followed by one year of supervised release. Counsel has filed a brief pursuant to Anders v. California, 386 U.S. 738 (1967), stating that there are no meritorious grounds for appeal but questioning the revocation decision and the reasonableness of Jackson’s sentence. The Government has not filed a response. Although informed of his right to file a pro se supplemental brief, Jackson has not done so. We affirm. A court may revoke 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). “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. George, 95 F.4th 200, 208 (4th Cir. 2024) (internal quotation marks omitted). We have reviewed the record and conclude that Jackson knowingly and voluntarily admitted to violating the terms of his supervised release and therefore that the court did not abuse its discretion in revoking his supervised release. With respect to the revocation sentence, “[a] district court has broad discretion when imposing a sentence upon revocation of supervised release.” United States v. Patterson, 957 F.3d 426, 436 (4th Cir. 2020). We “will affirm a revocation sentence if it is within the statutory maximum and is not plainly unreasonable.” Id. Before deciding “whether a revocation sentence is plainly unreasonable, [we] must first determine whether the sentence 2 USCA4 Appeal: 25-4398 Doc: 25 Filed: 04/27/2026 Pg: 3 of 4 is procedurally or substantively unreasonable,” id., evaluating “the same procedural and substantive considerations that guide our review of original sentences” but taking “a more deferential appellate posture than we do when reviewing original sentences,” United States v. Padgett, 788 F.3d 370, 373 (4th Cir. 2015) (citation modified). If a revocation sentence is both procedurally and substantively reasonable, we will not proceed to consider “whether the sentence is plainly unreasonable—that is, whether the unreasonableness is clear or obvious.” Patt