United States v. Ijaz Oliver

── United States v. Ijaz Oliver ── Court: Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Date: May 22, 2026 Category: General USCA4 Appeal: 25-4199 Doc: 24 Filed: 05/22/2026 Pg: 1 of 4 UNPUBLISHED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT No. 25-4199 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. IJAZ OLIVER, Defendant - Appellant. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, at Charleston. David A. Faber, Senior District Judge. (2:24-cr-00047-1) Submitted: May 18, 2026 Decided: May 22, 2026 Before RICHARDSON and QUATTLEBAUM, Circuit Judges, and KEENAN, Senior Circuit Judge. Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion. ON BRIEF: Scott C. Brown, SCOTT C. BROWN LAW OFFICE, Wheeling, West Virginia, for Appellant. Amy Lynn McLaughlin, Assistant United States Attorney, Jeremy Bryan Wolfe, Assistant United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Charleston, West Virginia, for Appellee. Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit. USCA4 Appeal: 25-4199 Doc: 24 Filed: 05/22/2026 Pg: 2 of 4 PER CURIAM: Ijaz Oliver pleaded guilty, without a plea agreement, to being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1), 924(a)(8). The district court sentenced Oliver to 18 months’ imprisonment to be followed by three years of supervised release. On appeal, Oliver’s counsel has filed a brief pursuant to Anders v. California, 386 U.S. 783 (1967), stating that there are no meritorious issues for appeal but questioning whether the district court erred in denying Oliver’s motion for a downward variant sentence and sentencing him at the high end of the advisory Sentencing Guidelines range. Oliver was informed of his right to file a pro se supplemental brief, but he has not done so. We affirm. “We review the reasonableness of a sentence under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) using an abuse-of-discretion standard, regardless of ‘whether [the sentence is] inside, just outside, or significantly outside the Guidelines range.’” United States v. Nance, 957 F.3d 204, 212 (4th Cir. 2020) (alteration in original) (quoting Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 41 (2007)). In performing that review, we first “evaluate procedural reasonableness, determining whether the district court committed any procedural error, such as improperly calculating the Guidelines range, failing to consider the § 3553(a) factors, or failing to adequately explain the chosen sentence.” Id. If “the district court has not committed procedural error,” we then assess the substantive reasonableness of the sentence. Id. Our substantive reasonableness review “takes into account the totality of the circumstances to determine whether the sentencing court abused its discretion in concluding that the sentence it chose satisfied the standards set forth in § 3553(a).” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Any sentence within “a 2 USCA4 Appeal: 25-4199 Doc: 24 Filed: 05/22/2026 Pg: 3 of 4 properly calculated Guidelines range is presumptively [substantively] reasonable. Such a presumption can only be rebutted by showing that the sentence is unreasonable when measured against the . . . § 3553(a) factors.” United States v. Louthian, 756 F.3d 295, 306 (4th Cir. 2014) (citation omitted). We are satisfied that Oliver’s 18-month sentence is procedurally reaso