A. Precedents Cited and Their Influence
Sentencing purposes and individualized assessment
Dean v. United States, 581 U.S. 62, 67 (2017), supplied the statutory starting point: a sentence must be sufficient, but not greater than necessary, to serve the purposes identified in § 3553(a). This principle requires sentencing courts to consider punishment, deterrence, public protection, and rehabilitation within the limits governing each purpose.
United States v. Guevara-Lopez, 147 F.4th 1174, 1183 (10th Cir. 2025), quoting United States v. Lente, 759 F.3d 1149, 1174 (10th Cir. 2014), required a holistic inquiry attentive to the individual defendant. These authorities supported examining Williams’s actual conduct and the character of his prior convictions rather than treating his offense level and criminal history category as a complete account of the case.
Procedural and substantive reasonableness
United States v. Cookson, 922 F.3d 1079, 1091 (10th Cir. 2019), drawing on United States v. Friedman, 554 F.3d 1301, 1307 (10th Cir. 2009), distinguished errors in calculating or explaining a sentence from challenges to its length. That distinction organized the entire appeal: Williams’s explanation-based arguments faced preservation requirements different from those governing his excessive-length argument.
United States v. Masek, 588 F.3d 1283, 1290 (10th Cir. 2009), similarly framed procedural review around the manner in which the sentence was calculated. Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 51 (2007), identified familiar procedural defects, including an incorrect Guidelines calculation, treating the Guidelines as mandatory, reliance on clearly erroneous facts, failure to consider statutory factors, and inadequate explanation of a variance.
Specific objections, forfeiture, and appellate waiver
United States v. Leffler, 942 F.3d 1192, 1196 (10th Cir. 2019), provided the decisive procedural rule. An unpreserved issue ordinarily receives, at most, plain-error review; when the appellant also fails to present a plain-error argument, the court ordinarily treats the issue as waived and declines review altogether.
United States v. Gantt, 679 F.3d 1240, 1247 (10th Cir. 2012), explained why an objection to an inadequate explanation ordinarily must follow sentencing: the judge must receive an opportunity to supply the missing explanation. Williams’s earlier objection to considering Walker’s state sentence did not notify the court that its subsequently delivered explanation was inadequate.
United States v. Ansberry, 976 F.3d 1108, 1125 (10th Cir. 2020), established that vague, ambiguous, or fleeting presentations do not preserve an issue. United States v. DeRusse, 859 F.3d 1232, 1237 (10th Cir. 2017), reinforced the requirement of a sufficiently specific sentencing objection. Together, these cases defeated reliance on counsel’s generalized objection.
United States v. Jackson, 82 F.4th 943, 949 (10th Cir. 2023), supplied the ordinary fallback of plain-error review for unpreserved procedural errors. Williams’s failure to invoke that framework on appeal brought the case within United States v. Leffler instead.
Preserving substantive challenges
United States v. Torres-Duenas, 461 F.3d 1178, 1183 (10th Cir. 2006), and United States v. Walker, 844 F.3d 1253, 1256 (10th Cir. 2017), supported the panel’s treatment of a claim that a sentence is unreasonably long as generally not requiring a further district-court objection.
The panel also acknowledged Judge Hartz’s concurrence in United States v. Garley, 186 F.4th 1237, 1256 (10th Cir. 2026), which cautioned against reading Holguin-Hernandez v. United States, 589 U.S. 169 (2020), as eliminating preservation requirements for every substantive sentencing argument. That caution did not alter the result here. Following United States v. Lucero, 130 F.4th 877, 886–87 (10th Cir. 2025), the panel applied abuse-of-discretion review.
Deference and the justification required for a major variance
United States v. Lente, 647 F.3d 1021, 1030 (10th Cir. 2011), described substantive review as examining sentence length, the treatment of § 3553(a), and the sufficiency of the supporting reasons. United States v. Gross, 44 F.4th 1298, 1304 (10th Cir. 2022), established that even a substantial variance may stand when the statutory factors are properly weighed and valid reasons support the result.
United States v. Peña, 963 F.3d 1016, 1024 (10th Cir. 2020), articulated the deferential standard: reversal requires a sentence that is arbitrary, capricious, whimsical, or manifestly unreasonable. Gall v. United States explained the institutional justification—trial judges are better positioned to find facts and assess their significance. Nevertheless, United States v. Pinson, 542 F.3d 822, 836 (10th Cir. 2008), warned that appellate review cannot become a rubber stamp.
United States v. Cookson rejected a presumption that an outside-Guidelines sentence is unreasonable. At the same time, Gall v. United States and the 2014 decision in United States v. Lente required justification proportionate to the variance’s magnitude: a major deviation requires more significant justification than a minor one.
United States v. Chavez, 723 F.3d 1226, 1233 (10th Cir. 2013), quoting United States v. McComb, 519 F.3d 1049, 1053 (10th Cir. 2007), framed the ultimate question as whether the sentence exceeded the bounds of permissible choice. United States v. Sells, 541 F.3d 1227, 1239 (10th Cir. 2008), further instructed appellate courts not to substitute their preferred balance of sentencing considerations for a reasonable district-court assessment.
Sentencing disparities and statistical comparisons
United States v. Branson, 463 F.3d 1110, 1112 (10th Cir. 2006), supported Williams’s objection to matching Walker’s ten-year state sentence. Adjusting federal sentences to conform to local state sentences can create the very disparities within the federal system that § 3553(a)(6) seeks to discourage. The panel did not retreat from that principle; it found no evidence that the district court relied on Walker’s sentence.
United States v. Guevara-Lopez also counseled meaningful consideration of disparities before a large variance, while recognizing that bare national statistics do not defeat an adequate individualized explanation. United States v. Lucero similarly explained that national averages lack decisive force when they do not establish similarity in defendants’ histories and characteristics. These cases supported rejecting Williams’s small statistical comparison group as conclusive proof of an unwarranted disparity.
Rehabilitation and imprisonment
Tapia v. United States, 564 U.S. 319, 332–34 (2011), prohibited imposing or lengthening imprisonment to promote rehabilitation, while permitting discussion of prison treatment opportunities. The distinction turns on whether rehabilitation influences the imprisonment decision or its duration, not merely whether treatment is mentioned.
United States v. Thornton, 846 F.3d 1110, 1118 (10th Cir. 2017), involved a sentence expressly predicated in part on giving the defendant enough prison time to change his life. United States v. Mendiola, 696 F.3d 1033, 1042 (10th Cir. 2012), involved a substantial upward variance imposed expressly to allow participation in a lengthy rehabilitation program. Williams’s sentencing remarks lacked the comparable connection between treatment and prison duration that made those cases problematic.
B. Legal Reasoning Applied to Williams
1. Preservation depended on the particular error alleged
Williams argued on appeal that the district court inadequately explained how sentencing disparities and his criminal history justified the sentence. Neither issue was specifically identified as an explanatory defect after sentencing. His earlier memorandum disputed the proposed reliance on Walker’s state sentence, but disagreement with a proposed sentencing consideration is not equivalent to identifying an inadequacy in the court’s eventual explanation.
The panel’s reasoning therefore involved two distinct steps: insufficient specificity prevented preservation, and failure to argue plain error foreclosed review of the unpreserved claims. Generalized objection alone did not automatically produce complete appellate waiver. Williams also withdrew a third procedural claim in his reply brief after acknowledging inadequate preservation.
2. The cumulative circumstances supported exceptional severity
The ninety-six-month sentence exceeded the Guidelines’ upper limit by thirty-nine months. The panel nevertheless rejected the characterization of this as an ordinary drunk-driving manslaughter case. It considered the combined significance of substantial alcohol intoxication, marijuana use before driving, lack of a motorcycle license, and the absence of helmets.
The court also considered Williams’s repeated substance-related offending. The district court concluded that a Guidelines sentence would insufficiently reflect seriousness, provide just punishment, deter further conduct, and promote respect for law. The appellate court treated those as case-specific reasons supporting the degree of variance, not as a categorical rule permitting maximum sentences whenever impaired driving causes death.
The sentencing judge initially misstated Williams’s blood alcohol reading as 0.147. The government corrected the figure to 0.138, and the judge acknowledged the correction while maintaining the assessment that it was almost twice the legal limit. The opinion thus records a corrected factual mistake rather than leaving the erroneous reading as the accepted sentencing fact.
3. Departure provisions informed, but did not replace, variance analysis
The district court referred to Guidelines § 5K2.14, which permits an upward departure when public health or safety was significantly endangered. The panel regarded that provision as supporting the relevance of the dangerous offense conduct.
The sentence, however, was imposed as an upward variance under § 3553(a). The opinion does not establish that the court formally granted the government’s requested five-level departure. Keeping those mechanisms separate is important: Guidelines departure provisions may inform the assessment without converting the sentence into a particular calculated departure.
4. Equal numerical profiles did not establish equal sentencing circumstances
Williams relied on Judiciary Sentencing Information data identifying seven defendants sentenced between 2018 and 2022 with the same offense level and criminal history score, none of whom received an above-Guidelines sentence. The panel acknowledged the resulting difference in outcomes but rejected the inference that it was unwarranted.
Those numerical similarities did not establish matching offense circumstances, substance-abuse histories, or relevant unscored convictions. The district court’s individualized reasons could therefore justify differentiation. Importantly, the panel did not declare sentencing statistics irrelevant or eliminate the obligation to consider disparities.
Nor did the record substantiate Williams’s theory that the court covertly used Walker’s state sentence as its benchmark. At the hearing, the government defended its request without relying on that comparison, and the judge did not mention Walker’s sentence when imposing Williams’s punishment.
5. Criminal history mattered beyond the Guidelines score
The district court considered both the number and the nature of Williams’s convictions. Repeated alcohol- and drug-related offenses bore directly on deterrence and the likelihood of recurrence in a new substance-related offense. A criminal history score aggregates convictions numerically; it does not necessarily capture the significance of a persistent, related pattern.
Moreover, many convictions—including both prior DUIs—had generated no criminal history points. The panel referred to Guidelines § 4A1.3, which recognizes that uncounted prior sentences can reveal an inadequately representative criminal history category. This supported considering the fuller record, although the court did not hold that every old or tribal conviction automatically warrants a higher sentence.
6. Acceptance of responsibility did not compel additional leniency
The district court expressly recognized that acceptance of responsibility had reduced the advisory range. The panel reasonably inferred that the judge found this mitigation insufficient to outweigh the aggravating factors. Requiring a different balance would have exceeded the appellate court’s reviewing role.
7. Treatment remarks did not establish a forbidden sentencing purpose
The district court’s reference to effective correctional treatment deserved scrutiny because rehabilitation cannot justify additional imprisonment. The panel nevertheless read the statement as a recitation of statutory considerations, followed by permissible encouragement to use available treatment programs.
Unlike the prohibited reasoning in the cited rehabilitation cases, the judge did not identify a program’s duration as the reason for selecting ninety-six months. The holding is therefore record-specific: mentioning treatment is permissible, but using treatment needs to determine or extend incarceration remains prohibited.