United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 13-1302
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Appellee,
v.
CÁNDIDO OBED APONTE-VELLÓN, a/k/a Obed,
Defendant, Appellant.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Francisco A. Besosa, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Torruella, Lipez and Howard,
Circuit Judges.
José Luis Novas Debien on brief for appellant.
Rosa Emilia Rodríguez-Vélez, United States Attorney, Nelson
Pérez-Sosa, Assistant United States Attorney, Chief, Appellate
Division, and Juan Carlos Reyes-Ramos, Assistant United States
Attorney, on brief, for appellee.
June 13, 2014
HOWARD, Circuit Judge. After pleading guilty to robbery
and brandishing a firearm during a robbery, Cándido Obed Aponte-
Vellón ("Aponte") received consecutive incarcerative sentences of
72 months and 84 months. On appeal, Aponte contends that the
district court improperly departed upward from the applicable
Guidelines sentencing range. Because Aponte in fact received a
sentence that varied from the applicable Guidelines ranges, rather
than an upward departure under the Guidelines, and because we
discern no plain error in the variance, we affirm.
I.
In 2012, Aponte pleaded guilty to both counts of an
indictment charging him and a co-defendant with robbery in
violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2 and 1951 (Count One) and with knowingly
carrying, using, and brandishing firearms during and in relation to
the robbery in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2 and 924(c)(1)(A) (Count
Two).
After a futile flurry of pro se motions in which Aponte
sought, inter alia, withdrawal of his guilty plea and appointment
of new counsel, the case proceeded to sentencing in February 2013.1
Following a presentence investigation report ("PSR") issued in
December 2012, the district court calculated an advisory Guidelines
sentencing range of 24 to 30 months' imprisonment for Count One and
a consecutive statutory minimum sentence of 84 months' imprisonment
1
Aponte does not press any of these pro se claims on appeal.
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for Count Two. Ultimately, however, the court declined to follow
the parties' recommended 108-month total sentence due to its
concern over the lengthy record of arrests and pending charges set
forth in Aponte's PSR:
The Court finds . . . that the sentence
to which the parties agree does not reflect
the seriousness of the offense or promote[]
respect for the law or protect[] the public
from further crimes by Mr. Aponte.
As part of a sentencing court's
inquiry, a sentencing judge may consider
whether a Defendant's criminal history score
substantially underrepresents the gravity of
his past conduct. That is the case here.
Mr. Aponte's record of past arrests or
dismissed charges, even though there is an
absence of any conviction, indicates a pattern
of unlawful behavior.
The district court proceeded to recite the PSR's list of pending or
dismissed state criminal charges against Aponte, including pending
charges of first-degree murder, robbery, and firearm violations.
In so doing, it recognized that some of the separately enumerated
counts related to the same cases: "Some of those cases are the
same, I recognize that."
The district court imposed prison sentences of 72 months
on Count One and 84 months on Count Two, to be served consecutively
for a total incarcerative term of 156 months.2 Following
2
At sentencing, the district court stated that it was
sentencing Aponte to 72 months on Count One and 84 months on Count
Two "for a total of 166 months." In its judgment and commitment
order, the district court again imposed consecutive sentences of 72
and 84 months. We therefore assume that the district court simply
made a misstatement or erred in its arithmetic at the sentencing
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imposition of sentence, Aponte objected that the court had erred in
"depart[ing] upward from the guidelines," because "[t]he pre-
sentence report did not identify any information that would warrant
a departure." The district court responded, "It's not a departure.
It's a variance." Aponte disagreed, and elaborated that the court
needed to first "go by the guidelines, determine if there are any
grounds for departure." The district court reiterated, "[T]his is
a variance, and I don't have to do that." This appeal followed.
II.
On appeal, Aponte raises four initial challenges to his
sentence, each resting on the premise that his sentence represented
an upward departure under the Guidelines. Specifically, Aponte
contends that 1) the court failed to provide advance notice of its
intent to depart from the Guidelines range, as required by Federal
Rule of Criminal Procedure 32(h)3; 2) the court failed to determine
the extent of the departure "by using, as a reference, the criminal
history category applicable to defendants whose criminal history or
hearing, and that the total sentence was in fact 156 months'
imprisonment.
3
Rule 32(h) provides:
Before the court may depart from the applicable
sentencing range on a ground not identified for departure
either in the presentence report or in a party's
prehearing submission, the court must give the parties
reasonable notice that it is contemplating such a
departure. The notice must specify any ground on which
the court is contemplating a departure.
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likelihood to recidivate most closely resembles that of the
defendant's," U.S.S.G. § 4A1.3(a)(4); 3) the court failed to set
forth in writing "the specific reasons why the applicable criminal
history category substantially under-represents the seriousness of
the defendant's criminal history or the likelihood that the
defendant will commit other crimes," id. § 4A1.3(c)(1); and 4) the
court improperly considered his prior arrest record for purposes of
an upward departure, id. § 4A1.3(a)(3). In the alternative, he
further avers that his sentence was improper even if construed as
a variance because 1) the district court imposed the variant
sentence without advance notice under Rule 32(h); and 2) the court
failed to state adequate reasons for the variance and improperly
relied upon his arrest record, rendering the sentence procedurally
unreasonable.
Aponte's first four arguments fail for the simple reason
that the district court imposed a variant sentence rather than an
upward departure. A "departure," as explained by the Supreme
Court, "is a term of art under the Guidelines and refers only to
non-Guidelines sentences imposed under the framework set out in the
Guidelines." Irizarry v. United States, 553 U.S. 708, 714 (2008).
Variant sentences, by contrast, were enabled by the invalidation of
the mandatory Guidelines regime in United States v. Booker, 543
U.S. 220 (2005), and result from a court's consideration of the
statutory sentencing factors enumerated in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a).
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See Irizarry, 553 U.S. at 714; United States v. Vixamar, 679 F.3d
22, 33 (1st Cir. 2012); see also United States v. Grams, 566 F.3d
683, 686-87 (6th Cir. 2009).
Although the district court explicitly described its
sentence as a "variance," Aponte contends that this nomenclature is
not dispositive and that the district court in fact relied on a
"classic ground for departure under the guidelines," to wit,
"reliable information indicat[ing] that the defendant's criminal
history category substantially under-represents the seriousness of
the defendant's criminal history or the likelihood that the
defendant will commit other crimes," U.S.S.G. § 4A1.3(a)(1).
The district court did indeed echo § 4A1.3(a)(1) in
finding that Aponte's Guidelines criminal history score
"substantially underrepresent[ed] the gravity of his past conduct"
due to the pending and dismissed charges set forth in the PSR. But
the court later explained that it was quoting from our opinion in
United States v. Flores-Machicote, 706 F.3d 16, 21 (1st Cir. 2013),
in which we recognized that "[a]s part of [the § 3553(a)(1)
'history and characteristics' inquiry], a sentencing judge may
consider whether a defendant's criminal history score substantially
underrepresents the gravity of his past conduct." Moreover, the
court only addressed Aponte's arrest record after stating that it
had "also considered the other sentencing factors set forth in [§
3553(a)]." Indeed, it specifically found "that the sentence to
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which the parties agree does not reflect the seriousness of the
offense or promote[] respect for the law or protect[] the public
from further crimes by Mr. Aponte," factors properly considered
under § 3553(a)(2)(A) & (C).
In short, nothing in the sentencing record persuades us
that the district court intended to or in fact applied an upward
departure under U.S.S.G. § 4A1.3(a)(1). Even if the court's
sentencing rationale were ambiguous -- and we do not think that it
is -- United States v. Marsh, 561 F.3d 81, 86 (1st Cir. 2009),
teaches that any error in a departure is harmless where the
district court would have imposed the same sentence as a variance
in any event: "If we find an alleged Guideline error would not have
affected the district court's sentence, we may affirm." That is
the case here. Even reading the court's initial reference to
Aponte's past arrests as invoking the application of a
§ 4A1.3(a)(1) upward departure, the court's subsequent description
of its sentence as a "variance" and its citation to Flores-
Machicote indicate that the court would have arrived at the same
sentence even if a departure were unwarranted.
We therefore turn to Aponte's alternative assertions that
his sentence was improper even as a non-Guidelines variance. The
first of these contentions -- that Rule 32(h) requires advance
notice even in the case of a variance -- warrants minimal scrutiny,
as that precise argument was flatly rejected by the Supreme Court
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in Irizarry. See 553 U.S. at 716 ("The fact that Rule 32(h)
remains in effect today does not justify extending its protections
to variances . . . ."); see also United States v. Fernández-
Cabrera, 625 F.3d 48, 52 (1st Cir. 2010) ("[T]he Supreme Court, in
the post-Booker era, has refused to expand the notice requirement
announced in Burns [v. United States, 501 U.S. 129 (1991) (codified
as Rule 32(h))] beyond the narrow confines of a sentencing
departure." (citing Irizarry, 553 U.S. at 714-15)). Rule 32(h)
therefore placed the district court under no obligation to provide
advance notice of the variance.
Aponte finally argues that his variant sentence was
procedurally unreasonable because the district court failed to
adequately weigh the § 3553(a) factors and "relied on the incorrect
premise of a pattern of unlawful behavior" inferred from Aponte's
arrest record. Aponte did not raise any such objection below; we
accordingly review for plain error only. See United States v.
Dávila-González, 595 F.3d 42, 47 (1st Cir. 2010).
In Aponte's account of the sentencing, the district court
merely "performed by what appears to be rote a recital of
[Aponte's] past arrests and then after counsel's objection for
failing to follow the requirements of U.S.S.G. § 4A1.3, then simply
invoked the Flores[-Machicote] case and varied substantially
without weighing any factors." Aponte therefore suggests that the
district court failed to give adequate consideration to the
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§ 3553(a) factors. See Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 49-50
(2007) (requiring the district court to "consider all of the
§ 3553(a) factors to determine whether they support the sentence
requested by a party" and to "make an individualized assessment
based on the facts presented").
We disagree with Aponte's characterization of the
district court's sentencing decision. As mentioned above, the
court stated that it had considered the § 3553(a) factors, and gave
specific attention to "the need for the sentence imposed to reflect
the seriousness of the offense, to promote respect for the law, .
. . [and] to protect the public from further crimes of the
defendant." 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(2)(A)-(C). As we recognized in
Flores-Machicote, 706 F.3d at 21, the determination of whether "a
defendant's criminal history score substantially underrepresents
the gravity of his past conduct" is also relevant to "the history
and characteristics of the defendant," 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(1).
Admittedly, the district court did not go through each of the §
3553(a) factors one by one, but our caselaw does not demand such an
exhaustive approach. See Marsh, 561 F.3d at 86 ("While the
district court's explicit acknowledgment of § 3553(a) was brief, we
do not require the court to address those factors, one by one, in
some sort of rote incantation when explicating its sentencing
decision." (internal quotation marks omitted)); see also Dávila-
González, 595 F.3d at 49 ("[T]he fact that the court stated that it
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had considered all the section 3553(a) factors is entitled to some
weight."). We therefore find no plain error in the district
court's § 3553(a) calculus.
Finally, we also reject Aponte's contention that the
district court placed too much weight upon his record of pending
and dismissed state criminal charges. As we stated in Flores-
Machicote, "[a] record of past arrests or dismissed charges may
indicate a pattern of unlawful behavior even in the absence of any
convictions." 706 F.3d at 21 (internal quotation marks omitted);
see also United States v. Ocasio-Cancel, 727 F.3d 85, 91-92 (1st
Cir. 2013). Aponte's PSR set forth three separate incidents of
criminal conduct charged in state court: dismissed robbery and
firearm charges from July 2010; pending aggravated robbery, first-
degree murder, and firearm charges, and dismissed harm to a minor
charges, from August 2010; and pending robbery and firearm charges
from October 26, 2010, hours after the robbery to which Aponte
pleaded guilty in this case. It was not plainly erroneous for the
district court to have inferred a pattern of malfeasance from three
separate incidents in a four-month span.
III.
For the foregoing reasons, we affirm Aponte's sentence.
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