Full Opinion

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS OCT 26 2026 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, No. 25-2471 D.C. No. Plaintiff - Appellant, 5:23-cr-00026-SSS-1 v. MEMORANDUM* JOHN LOUIS DAVIS, Defendant - Appellee. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California Sunshine Suzanne Sykes, District Judge, Presiding Submitted October 19, 2026** Pasadena, California Before: BUMATAY, VANDYKE, and MENDOZA, JR., Circuit Judges. John Davis pleaded guilty to one count of fentanyl distribution under 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), (b)(1)(C). The government appeals Davis’s sentence and the sentencing judge’s decision to not apply the firearm enhancement under U.S. * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2). Sentencing Guidelines (“U.S.S.G.”) § 2D1.1(b)(1). We have jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 3742(b), and we vacate and remand for resentencing. 1. Review of a sentence on appeal is limited to whether it is “reasonable; only a procedurally erroneous or substantively unreasonable sentence will be set aside.” United States v. Carty, 520 F.3d 984, 993 (9th Cir. 2008) (en banc). The substantive reasonableness of a sentence is reviewed for abuse of discretion. United States v. Autery, 555 F.3d 864, 871 (9th Cir. 2009). To determine whether a sentence is substantively reasonable, a district court must evaluate the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factors. United States v. Thompson, 130 F.4th 1158, 1164 (9th Cir. 2025). A sentence is reasonable if “the record as a whole reflects rational and meaningful consideration of” these factors. Id. (simplified). A district court must “avoid unwarranted sentence disparities among defendants with similar records who have been found guilty of similar conduct[.]” 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(6). And it must “give serious consideration to the extent of any departure from the Guidelines,” and explain its “conclusion that an unusually lenient . . . sentence is appropriate in a particular case with sufficient justifications.” Autery, 555 F.3d at 872 (simplified). Davis received a sentence of time served and three years of supervised release, which amounted to five total days in prison. But the initial Guidelines range calculated by the Probation Office was 63–78 months. The district court’s decision to give Davis a shorter sentence does not reflect a “rational and meaningful 2 25-2471 consideration” of the § 3553(a) factors. Thompson, 130 F.4th at 1164. First, when determining whether the sentence afforded “adequate deterrence,” the district court overemphasized “specific deterrence of the defendant” and minimized the need for “general deterrence.” See id. at 1166–67. It justified Davis’s short sentence by concluding that prison time would negatively affect his future behavior and recovery from drug addiction. But in reaching this conclusion, the district court underemphasized the effect that imprisonment can have on general deterrence. It is unlikely that a sentence of five days in prison will meaningfully deter future drug traffickers. And a district court makes a “clear error of judgment” when it does not give deterrence “meaningful weight in selecting the sentence that it imposed.” Id. at 1167. Second, while a district court “need not tick off each of the § 3553(a) factors,” “a significant variance from the Guidelines must be supported by a correspondingly persuasive justification.” Carty, 520 F.3d at 992; Thompson, 130 F.4th at 1168. The district court failed to even mention this factor at all, despite a near total reduction from the Guidelines range. This failure to “weigh[] the risk of unwarranted disparity” in a sentencing decision is an abuse of discretion. Id. We thus vacate and remand for resentencing. 2. We review the district court’s legal interpretation of the Sentencing Guidelines de novo. United States v. Gasca-Ruiz, 852 F.3d 1167, 1170 (9th Cir. 3 25-2471 2017). A sentence is procedurally erroneous if the district court incorrectly interprets the Sentencing Guidelines and thus miscalculates the appropriate Guidelines range. See Carty, 520 F.3d at 993. Under U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1(b)(1), courts apply a two-level increase to drug- trafficking convictions if the defendant possessed a dangerous weapon such as a firearm. Courts apply the increase “if the weapon was present, unless it is clearly improbable that the weapon was connected with the offense.” U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1(b)(1) cmt. 11(A). And the defendant need not have the firearm on his person during the sale of the drugs for the two-level enhancement to apply. United States v. Gomez, 6 F.4th 992, 1008 (9th Cir. 2021). Rather, the enhancement properly applies so long as the weapon is connected with an act or omission occurring within “the entire course of criminal conduct.” Id. at 1009 (simplified). The district court did not apply the firearm enhancement to Davis’s sentence for two reasons: he did not have the firearm in “his immediate possession” when he sold the fentanyl and the firearm was found in his home near drugs that the district court concluded were for Davis’s personal use. But when the district court was considering whether to apply the sentencing enhancement, it did not need to find that Davis had the firearm in his “immediate possession” for the sentencing enhancement to apply. The district court’s conclusion that the firearm was not in Davis’s “immediate possession” thus leaves insufficient clarity as to whether it 4 25-2471 applied the correct legal interpretation of the Sentencing Guidelines. On remand, the district court must clarify the legal standard it used to determine the appropriate Sentencing Guidelines range. VACATED and REMANDED for resentencing. 5 25-2471