USA v. FERNÁNDEZ-CABRERA

• Decision Date: 05 November 2010
• Docket Number: No. 09-2655.,09-2655.
• Citation: 625 F.3d 48
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Henry FERNÁNDEZ-CABRERA, Defendant, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

625 F.3d 48

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee,

v.Henry FERNÁNDEZ-CABRERA, Defendant, Appellant.

No. 09-2655.

United States Court of Appeals,First Circuit.

Submitted Oct. 14, 2010.

Decided Nov. 5, 2010.

Stephen Neyman, on brief, for appellant.

Rosa Emilia Rodríguez-Vélez, United States Attorney, Nelson Pérez-Sosa, Chief, Appellate Division, and Luke Cass, Assistant United States Attorney, on brief, for appellee.

Before BOUDIN, SELYA and HOWARD, Circuit Judges.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

Defendant-appellant Henry Fernández-Cabrera pleaded guilty to one count of illegal reentry into the United States. Eschewing the parties' joint recommendation for a sentence at the bottom of the guideline sentencing range (GSR), the district court sentenced the defendant to 33 months in prison. The defendant now mounts a challenge to both the district court's failure to provide advance notice of its intention not to adopt the joint sentencing recommendation and the adequacy of the court's explanation for its choice of sentence. Discerning no error, we affirm.

In considering a sentencing appeal that trails in the wake of a guilty plea, we glean the relevant facts from the plea agreement, the change-of-plea colloquy, the presentence investigation report (PSI Report), and the transcript of the disposition hearing. See United States v. Nguyen, 618 F.3d 72, 73 (1st Cir.2010); United States v. Dietz, 950 F.2d 50, 51 (1st Cir.1991).

This case first took shape in June of 2009, when police officers in San Juan detained the defendant after he failed to furnish identification following an investigation of a traffic accident and his admission that he was in the United States illegally. The officers promptly notified federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and ceded jurisdiction to that agency.

ICE's investigation revealed that this was not the defendant's first illegal foray into the United States. In 2000, he had entered the United States illegally and stayed until his arrest two years later on drug and weapons charges. See 21 U.S.C. §§ 812, 841; 18 U.S.C. § 922. In the course of the ensuing criminal proceedings, the defendant admitted to three prior illegal entries into the United States. Each time, he had been apprehended but allowed to depart voluntarily to the Dominican Republic (his homeland).

The government ultimately secured a conviction on the drug and weapons charges in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The court imposed a 21-month prison sentence. The defendant served his time and an immigration judge ordered his removal to the Dominican Republic. In connection with his deportation he received an I-294 Form, which explained that his return to the United States was forbidden without the approval of the Attorney General and that criminal penalties would result should he violate that prohibition.

In defiance of this edict, the defendant returned illegally to the United States in October of 2007. He remained in this country until his 2009 arrest. At that time, the government charged him with illegal reentry after having been deported following his conviction for an aggravated felony. See 8 U.S.C. § 1326(a), (b)(2).

The defendant waived indictment, thus qualifying for participation in a “fast-track” plea agreement program. ¹ He entered into a plea agreement (the Agreement) with the government and pleaded guilty to a one-count information.

The Agreement placed the defendant's GSR at 30-37 months. ² It acknowledged that the parties would jointly recommend to the district court “a sentence of imprisonment equal to the lower end of the applicable guideline.” The Agreement also contained a waiver-of-appeal provision, which stated that if the district court was to “accept[ ] the plea agreement and sentence[ ] the defendant according to the sentencing recommendations contemplated [in the Agreement],” the defendant would be deemed to have surrendered any right to appeal.

At the disposition hearing, the district court abjured the proposed sentence, instead imposing a sentence near the mid-point of the GSR: 33 months. The court explained:

Defendant has a prior federal criminal conviction for trafficking of firearms and possessing with intent to distribute cocaine.... He has admitted to four prior illegal entries into the United States, the present offense being his fifth illegal entry.

In order to reflect the seriousness of the offense, to promote respect for the law, and particularly to deter similar conduct by this Defendant in the future, the Court finds that a sentence at mid applicable guideline range is sufficient but not greater than necessary to address these statutory sentencing factors.

The defendant made no contemporaneous objection to this statement (or, for that matter, to any finding made in connection with sentencing).

Following the entry of judgment, the defendant served a timely notice of appeal. In his appeal, he challenges his sentence on the ground that the district court failed to provide either (i) advance notice of its intention to deviate from the jointly recommended sentence or (ii) an adequate explanation of its decision. The government counters that the defendant has waived any right to appeal and that, in all events, the defendant's claims lack force. Because the government's waiver-of-appeal argument is logically antecedent to the defendant's plaints, we start there.

[2] The government's waiver argument need not detain us. A criminal defendant who waives his right to appeal relinquishes a substantial right. Consequently, a waiver-of-appeal provision in a plea agreement should be construed according to its tenor, and any ambiguities should be resolved in favor of allowing the appeal to proceed. See United States v. Acosta-Roman, 549 F.3d 1, 3-4 (1st Cir.2008); United States v. McCoy, 508 F.3d 74, 77 (1st Cir.2007); United States v. Teeter, 257 F.3d 14, 23-25 (1st Cir.2001).

[3] In the case at hand, the language of the waiver-of-appeal provision is pellucid: the waiver does not attach unless the district court has “sentence [d] the defendant according to the sentencing recommendations contemplated [in the Agreement].” The Agreement contains only a single sentencing recommendation: a joint entreaty that the district court sentence the defendant to a term of imprisonment “equal to the lower end of the applicable guidelines.” But, here, the GSR encompasses a span of 30-37 months, yet the district court sentenced the defendant to a 33-month term of immurement. That mid-range sentence was not the low-end sentence “contemplated” in the Agreement.

[4] That ends this aspect of the matter. A waiver-of-appeal provision is enforceable according to its terms. Acosta-Roman, 549 F.3d at 3. The government, however, is not entitled to recast the reach of such a provision after the fact. When the district court chose not to follow the parties' joint sentencing recommendation, the waiver-of-appeal provision, as framed, was relegated to the scrap heap. Consequently, the appeal may proceed.

[5] [6] We turn next to the defendant's claims. We begin with the standard of review. The Supreme Court has directed the courts of appeals to review an appealed sentence for reasonableness. See Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 46, 128 S.Ct. 586, 169 L.Ed.2d 445 (2007). This assessment is to be made pursuant to a deferential abuse-of-discretion standard. Id. That approach pertains where, as here, the sentencing court has imposed a within-the-range sentence. United States v. Carrasco-De-Jesús, 589 F.3d 22, 26 (1st Cir.2009); United States v. Jiménez-Beltre, 440 F.3d 514, 517 (1st Cir.2007) (en banc); United States v. Deppe, 509 F.3d 54, 62 (1st Cir.2007).

In this context, reasonableness has both substantive and procedural dimensions. The defendant does not challenge the substantive reasonableness of his sentence but, rather, advances two claims of procedural unreasonableness.

The first of these claims is premised on the Supreme Court's decision in Burns v. United States, 501 U.S. 129, 111 S.Ct. 2182, 115 L.Ed.2d 123 (1991). There, the Court held that a defendant must be afforded reasonable notice before a sentencing court may depart upward from the GSR on grounds not specifically flagged in either the PSI Report or some other submission that antedates the disposition hearing. ³ Id. at 138, 111 S.Ct. 2182.

The defendant's emphasis on Burns is doubly flawed. For one thing, this emphasis ignores the shifting of the tectonic plates caused by the Court's subsequent decision in United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220, 125 S.Ct. 738, 160 L.Ed.2d 621 (2005). For another thing, honoring this claim would involve an unwarranted expansion of Burns. We explain each of these flaws briefly.

We begin this explanation with a comment on the effect of Booker. The Burns Court perceived a “special need for notice,” Irizarry v. United States, 553 U.S. 708, 713-14, 128 S.Ct. 2198, 171 L.Ed.2d 28 (2008), at a point in time when the federal sentencing guidelines were viewed as mandatory. The Court's later decision in Booker, 543 U.S. at 246, 264-65, 125 S.Ct. 738, undermined that premise. Booker rendered the guidelines advisory. See id. This is important because, under a mandatory guideline regime, the parties could reasonably anticipate judicial adherence to the guidelines and, thus, a sentence within the GSR. See Irizarry, 553 U.S. at 714, 128 S.Ct. 2198. Thus, when a sentencing court opted to depart upward without advance notice, a defendant might well be caught unawares. See Burns, 501 U.S. at 138, 111 S.Ct. 2182.

Booker changes that dynamic. As previously noted, the holding in Booker made the guidelines advisory. That, in turn, made deviations from the guidelines more readily foreseeable and, thus, made sentences within the GSR less a matter of routine. See United States v. Vega-Santiago, 519 F.3d 1, 4 (1st Cir.2008) (noting that, post- Booker, the sentencing inquiry “is...