United States v. Gonzalez

• Decision Date: 17 November 2020
• Docket Number: No. 19-1351,19-1351
• Citation: 981 F.3d 11
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Edwin GONZALEZ, a/k/a Sangriento, Defendant, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

981 F.3d 11

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee,

v.Edwin GONZALEZ, a/k/a Sangriento, Defendant, Appellant.

No. 19-1351

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

November 17, 2020

Julia Pamela Heit, New York, NY, for appellant.

Donald C. Lockhart, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Andrew E. Lelling, United States Attorney, was on brief, for appellee.

Before Lynch, Selya, and Barron, Circuit Judges.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

Every time that the law draws an age-based line to create a protected class, there are some people who fall outside the protected class. Those persons often regard the point at which the line is drawn as arbitrary. This appeal is brought by a criminal defendant who argues that a particular age-based line should be redrawn to include persons of his age within the protected class.

Specifically, defendant-appellant Edwin Gonzalez takes aim at a line drawn by the Supreme Court, as a matter of constitutional interpretation, which protects juvenile offenders (that is, offenders who are not yet eighteen years of age at the time that the charged crime was committed) but not adult offenders (that is, offenders who were eighteen years of age or older when the charged crime was committed) from certain life-without-parole sentences. See Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460, 465, 132 S.Ct. 2455, 183 L.Ed.2d 407 (2012) (holding mandatory life-without-parole sentences unconstitutional for all juvenile offenders); see also Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48, 82, 130 S.Ct. 2011, 176 L.Ed.2d 825 (2010) (declaring unconstitutional life-without-parole sentences for non-homicide juvenile offenders). Refined to bare essence, Gonzalez (who was twenty years old at the time he committed the charged crime) seeks to reconfigure the age-specific line and vacate his sentence of life imprisonment without parole. In the bargain, he asks us to blur the distinction between his discretionary life-without-parole sentence and the mandatory life-without-parole sentence examined by the Miller Court.

We conclude, for several reasons, that the defendant's claims of constitutional error are unavailing. Similarly, we conclude that his remaining claims of error are impuissant. Consequently, we uphold the life-without-parole sentence imposed by the district court.

I. BACKGROUND

Although the relevant facts are (by the defendant's own admission) "gruesome," they are essentially undisputed. And even though the defendant's appeal targets only his life-without-parole sentence, a brief rehearsal of the factual background and procedural history helps to set the stage.

The defendant is a member of La Mara Salvatrucha, a gang colloquially known as MS-13. MS-13 has gained notoriety for the brutality of its crimes and the relative youth of both its members and its victims. The gang's reach spans the Western Hemisphere: although its leadership remains in El Salvador, many of its regional and local branches, known respectively as "programs" and "cliques," are located throughout the United States. The web woven by MS-13 is so pervasive that the federal government often refers to the gang as a transnational criminal organization.

Of particular pertinence here, MS-13 is quite active in the Boston area. Prominent MS-13 cliques exist in East Boston, Chelsea, Everett, Lynn, and Revere. From time to time, the defendant was affiliated with several of these cliques.

The core purpose of MS-13 is to kill or maim rival gang members and collect money for MS-13's leadership. The defendant earned himself acclaim within local MS-13 circles for fulfilling this core purpose, and he received promotions within the hierarchy of an East Boston clique for committing a golconda of violent acts. These acts earned the defendant the nom de guerre "Sangriento" — "Bloody" — in recognition of the mayhem that he inflicted.

The case at hand centers around two murders that underscore the accuracy of the defendant's sobriquet. In 2015, the defendant (then age twenty) spearheaded a plan to kill Wilson Martinez, then fifteen years of age, whom the defendant suspected of being a member of the rival 18th Street Gang. The plan was complex: over a period of several months, MS-13 members created a phony Facebook account that appeared to belong to a teenage girl, sent messages to Martinez, and eventually persuaded Martinez to rendezvous with this imaginary girl at a secluded beach. When Martinez arrived, he was ambushed by the defendant and several MS-13 underlings. Martinez was robbed and stabbed repeatedly. During the course of the encounter, the defendant instructed an unarmed MS-13 acolyte to find a weapon so that the latter could participate in the attack. Following the defendant's instructions, the boy grabbed a rock and struck Martinez in the head.

After Martinez was killed, the defendant directed a clean-up. Despite the clean-up, the tip of a knife was later found next to Martinez's body. This murder gained the defendant considerable notoriety within MS-13 and led to his promotion to a position of great respect and authority. Many gang members attended the promotion ceremony.

In eerily similar circumstances, the defendant (still age twenty) orchestrated the January 2016 murder of Cristofer de la Cruz, then sixteen years old, who was suspected of membership in the 18th Street Gang. The defendant used the same ruse, luring the victim to danger under the guise of a date with a teenage girl. MS-13 members picked up de la Cruz in a nearby town, pretending to be relatives of the imaginary girl. Another ambush occurred when de la Cruz reached East Boston: the defendant and three other MS-13 members stabbed de la Cruz some forty-eight times. Once again, the defendant organized a clean-up, ordering gang members to bury weapons and soiled clothing. A cooperating witness subsequently directed the authorities to the burial site, leading to the recovery of many of the weapons. Some of the items recovered contained the DNA of both the defendant and the victim.

In due course, a federal grand jury sitting in the District of Massachusetts returned an indictment that — as relevant here — charged the defendant with violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), see 18 U.S.C. § 1962(d). In the indictment, the grand jury charged the murders of Martinez and de la Cruz as predicate acts of the RICO conspiracy. A jury was empaneled, and a trial ensued.

The district court instructed the jury on second-degree murder with respect to the predicate offenses on the theory that first-degree and second-degree murder resulted in the same statutory penalties under RICO. The jury found the defendant guilty as charged.

A presentence investigation report (PSI Report) was prepared, which calculated the defendant's base offense level at forty-three premised on a cross-reference to the first-degree murder guideline. See USSG § 2A1.1(a). The PSI Report also recommended various enhancements, which are of scant importance: an offense level of forty-three, in and of itself, calls for a life sentence regardless of the defendant's criminal history. See USSG ch.5, pt. A. The defendant objected to the PSI Report, contending that the base offense level should be set by cross-reference to the second-degree murder guideline.

At the disposition hearing, the district court concluded that it was within the court's discretion to determine, by a preponderance of the evidence, the degree of murder that was relevant for sentencing purposes. Finding that both murders were premeditated, the court accepted the guideline calculation adumbrated in the PSI Report. When offered an opportunity to allocute, the defendant stood mute and chose not to express any remorse.

The district court imposed a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Even though the court considered mitigating factors (such as the defendant's youth, the possibility of his reformation, his challenging upbringing, and the peer pressures associated with gang membership), it found those factors vastly outweighed by the heinous nature of the crime and the defendant's stolid lack of remorse.¹ This timely appeal, which is directed exclusively at the defendant's sentence, followed.

II. ANALYSIS

We divide our analysis into three principal segments, corresponding with the components of the defendant's asseverational array. We start with the defendant's challenge to the district court's first-degree murder determination, proceed to assess the defendant's Eighth Amendment challenge, and conclude with an appraisal of the defendant's critique of the reasonableness of his sentence.

A. The First-Degree Murder Determination.

At sentencing, the district court determined that — for purposes related to the application of the sentencing guidelines — the defendant had twice committed the predicate offense of first-degree murder, notwithstanding that the jury had been instructed only on second-degree murder. The defendant assigns error in two respects. First, he says that the determination violates his constitutional rights because only a jury, not a judge, has the responsibility of finding beyond a reasonable doubt any fact that increases a mandatory minimum sentence. Second, he says that because the RICO statute references state crimes as predicate offenses, state procedural rules regarding who determines the degree of murder should control with respect to those crimes. We address these assignments of error separately.

1. The Alleyne Challenge. The defendant's first claim of error is premised on his reading of the Supreme Court's decision in Alleyne v. United States, 570 U.S. 99, 133 S.Ct. 2151, 186 L.Ed.2d 314 (2013). Because the defendant preserved this claim before the district court, our review is de novo. See United States v. Batchu, 724 F.3d 1, 7 (1st Cir. 2013). The central question is whether the defendant's constitutional rights (either his Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial or his Fifth Amendment due process rights) were abridged when the sentencing...