United States v. Derrick Seals

United States Court of Appeals For the Eighth Circuit ___________________________

No. 18-1255 ___________________________

United States of America

lllllllllllllllllllllPlaintiff - Appellee

v.

Derrick T. Seals

lllllllllllllllllllllDefendant - Appellant ____________

Appeal from United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri - Kansas City ____________

Submitted: August 10, 2018 Filed: August 27, 2018 [Unpublished] ____________

Before WOLLMAN, GRUENDER, and GRASZ, Circuit Judges. ____________

PER CURIAM.

Federal inmate Derrick Seals, who is serving a statutory mandatory minimum sentence, directly appeals after the district court1 denied his 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2)

1 The Honorable Brian C. Wimes, United States District Judge for the Western District of Missouri.

motion for a sentence reduction. His counsel has moved for leave to withdraw, and has filed a brief, asserting that the district court erred by denying Seals’s motion without conducting an evidentiary hearing.

After careful consideration, see United States v. Long, 757 F.3d 762, 763 (8th Cir. 2014) (noting that a legal conclusion as to whether § 3582(c)(2) authorizes a modification is reviewed de novo, and that a discretionary decision as to whether to grant an authorized modification is reviewed for an abuse of discretion), we conclude that Seals could not have obtained a sentence reduction because the district court had already imposed a statutory minimum sentence, see United States v. Peters, 524 F.3d 905, 907 (8th Cir. 2008) (per curiam) (concluding that a sentence reduction was not authorized because the prisoner had received a statutory mandatory minimum sentence). Consequently, no error occurred, and an evidentiary hearing could not have made a difference.

We thus affirm the judgment, and we grant counsel’s motion to withdraw. ______________________________

-2-