United States v. Phillip Medley

PER CURIAM. Phillip Stephen Medley pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting the production of child pornography, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2 and § 2251(a) (Count I), and to a separately occurring child-pornography-production offense, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2251(b) (Count II). The district court 1 sentenced him to concurrent sentences of 25 years on Count I and 20 years on Count II, to be followed by lifetime supervised release. On appeal, counsel has moved to withdraw, and has filed a brief under Anders v. California, 386 U.S. 738, 87 S.Ct. 1396, 18 L.Ed.2d 493 (1967), arguing that Medley’s sentence is unreasonable. Upon careful review, we conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in sentencing Medley, and that the court imposed a substantively reasonable sentence. See United States v. Feemster, 572 F.3d 455, 461 (8th Cir.2009) (en banc) (in reviewing sentence for abuse of discretion, appellate court first ensures that district court committed no significant procedural error, and then considers substantive reasonableness of sentence); see also United States v. Wadena, 470 F.3d 735, 737 (8th Cir.2006) (appellate court reviews sentence, including any downward vari-anee, for reasonableness under abuse-of-discretion standard). Having reviewed the record independently under Penson v. Ohio, 488 U.S. 75, 80, 109 S.Ct. 346, 102 L.Ed.2d 300 (1988), we have found no nonfrivolous issues for appeal. Accordingly, we grant counsel’s motion to withdraw, and we affirm. Footnotes [1] The Honorable Robert T. Dawson, United States District Judge for the Western District of Arkansas.