UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

┐ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, │ Plaintiff-Appellee, │ > No. 23-3422 │ v. │ │ EDGARDO ESTERAS, │ Defendant-Appellant. │ ┘

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio at Youngstown. No. 4:14-cr-00425-10—Benita Y. Pearson, District Judge.

Decided and Filed: December 20, 2023*

Before: SUTTON, Chief Judge; WHITE and THAPAR, Circuit Judges. _________________

COUNSEL ON BRIEF: Christian J. Grostic, OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Cleveland, Ohio, for Appellant. Matthew B. Kall, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY’S OFFICE, Cleveland, Ohio, for Appellee.

SUTTON, C.J., delivered the order of the court in which THAPAR, J., joins in full. WHITE, J., joins in the result because she agrees that United States v. Lewis, 498 F.3d 393 (6th Cir. 2007) is controlling.

*This decision originally issued as a judge order on August 16, 2023. The court has now designated the amended order for publication. No. 23-3422 United States v. Esteras Page 2

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AMENDED ORDER ____________________

SUTTON, Chief Judge. Edgardo Esteras appeals the district court’s order revoking his supervised release and sentencing him to 24 months in prison. We affirm the district court’s revocation order for the reasons that follow.

In 2018, Esteras pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute and possess with intent to distribute heroin in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and 846. Varying downward from a guidelines range of 15 to 21 months, the district court sentenced Esteras to 12 months of imprisonment, to be served consecutively with a 15-month prison term for violating his probation for a prior federal drug-trafficking conviction, followed by six years of supervised release.

Esteras’s six-year term of supervised release began in January 2020. Three years later, in January 2023, the probation officer reported to the district court that Esteras had violated the conditions of his supervised release (1) by committing domestic violence, aggravated menacing, and criminal damaging, and (2) by possessing a firearm. The probation officer notified the district court that the new criminal charges against Esteras had been dismissed at the victim’s request.

Judge Benita Y. Pearson conducted a hearing and found that Esteras possessed a firearm while under supervised release. She “worr[ied]” that her previous sentences for drug crimes and violating an earlier supervised release term failed “to deter [Esteras], to encourage [him] to be respectful of the law.” R.439 at 83. Based on his “dangerous” and “disrespectful” behavior, she varied upward from an advisory range of six to twelve months to impose a 24-month jail sentence, “long enough to at least allow [Esteras] to reconsider [his] behavior.” Id. at 85. She added three years of supervised release to the sentence, including an anger management class and six months of location monitoring. These conditions, Judge Pearson explained, would