United States v. Carlos Grooms

USCA4 Appeal: 23-4685 Doc: 44 Filed: 12/18/2025 Pg: 1 of 3 UNPUBLISHED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT No. 23-4685 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. CARLOS ANTONIO GROOMS, a/k/a B-Lord, Defendant - Appellant. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, at Columbia. Mary G. Lewis, District Judge. (3:22-cr-00800-MGL-1) Submitted: December 2, 2025 Decided: December 18, 2025 Before RUSHING and HEYTENS, Circuit Judges, and FLOYD, Senior Circuit Judge. Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion. ON BRIEF: Howard W. Anderson III, TRULUCK THOMASON LLC, Greenville, South Carolina, for Appellant. Elliott Bishop Daniels, Assistant United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellee. Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit. USCA4 Appeal: 23-4685 Doc: 44 Filed: 12/18/2025 Pg: 2 of 3 PER CURIAM: Carlos Antonio Grooms, who was sentenced to 360 months in prison after he pled guilty, pursuant to a plea agreement, to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute 100 grams or more of a mixture or substance containing a detectible amount of heroin and 40 grams or more of a mixture or substance containing a detectible amount of Fentanyl, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), (b)(1)(B), 846, seeks to challenge a special condition of his supervised release. Specifically, Grooms alleges that the condition ordering him to submit to drug testing is unlawful under plain error review because the district court set no limits on the number of tests that can be required and, thus, the court unlawfully delegated a choice of punishment to the probation officer. The Government moves to dismiss the appeal based on the appeal waiver in Grooms’ plea agreement. Grooms opposes dismissal, asking that this court join the Ninth Circuit in excepting from appeal waivers anti-delegation challenges to supervised release conditions. We placed Grooms’ appeal in abeyance pending the court’s decision in United States v. Jones, Appeal No. 23-4713, which raised essentially identical issues under plain error review. The court’s decision in Jones has issued, see United States v. Jones, 157 F.4th 375 (4th Cir. 2025), and dictates the outcome of Grooms’ appeal, see id. at 378 & n.4 (explaining that its interpretation of the same special supervised release condition “forecloses any argument that the district court unconstitutionally delegated a core judicial function to the Probation Office,” and denying as moot the Government’s motion to dismiss that appeal based on an appeal waiver because it was “satisfied to reject Jones’s appellate contention on the merits”). 2 USCA4 Appeal: 23-4685 Doc: 44 Filed: 12/18/2025 Pg: 3 of 3 Accordingly, we affirm the criminal judgment and deny the Government’s motion to dismiss the appeal as moot. We dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal contentions are adequately presented in the materials before this court and argument would not aid the decisional process. AFFIRMED 3