U.S. V. CHARMAINE MIESHA BROWN
- Summarized by Jonathan Batiste , Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
- 1 month 5 days ago
- Case Type:
- Consumer
- Case Status:
- Affirmed
- Citation:
- No. 24-4394 (4th Circuit, Jan 13,2026) Not Published
- Tag(s):
-
- Ruling:
- Criminal sentences below guideline ranges are presumptively reasonable. Parties cannot use out-of-circuit precedent to demonstrate plain error.
- Procedural context:
- Appellant received a discharge through bankruptcy proceedings. Then she received fraud charges in the district court. After the court convicted her, she appealed to the circuit court.
- Facts:
- Charmaine Miesha Brown married Andrews Oduro Brown, a Ghanaian national, in 2014. They then applied for U.S. passports for Andrews’ Ghanaian children, and they falsely claimed that Charmaine was their biological mother. They also used another person’s identity to collect childcare subsidy payments, take out car loans, and take out credit card loans. Finally, they received a discharge through bankruptcy. After they engaged in that conduct, they received fraud charges. Andrews pled guilty to several charges, and he received a 28-month imprisonment term. A federal jury eventually found Charmaine guilty of conspiracy to commit passport fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, bankruptcy fraud, and false statements in bankruptcy. The court sentenced her to 30 months in prison. Charmaine then appealed to the circuit court, which affirmed the district court’s judgment. Substantial evidence supported the jury’s decision to reject Charmaine’s necessity defense. While she claimed that her bankruptcy fraud conviction relied on an invalid trustee-victim theory, she relied on out-of-circuit precedent that does not meet the plain error threshold. Thus, her claim failed. Lastly, she claimed that the district court gave her a substantively unreasonable sentence, but the circuit court disagreed. The sentence fell below the guidelines. She also had a trial while Andrews pled guilty, accepted responsibility, and had no criminal history, unlike Charmaine.
- Judge(s):
- Gregory, Thacker, and Heytens
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