IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
FILED
November 5, 2008
No. 08-50203
Summary Calendar Charles R. Fulbruge III
Clerk
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Plaintiff-Appellee
v.
ENRIQUE INFANTE-RAMIREZ
Defendant-Appellant
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Texas
USDC No. 3:07-CR-2213-ALL
Before REAVLEY, DAVIS, and ELROD, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:*
Enrique Infante-Ramirez (Infante) appeals from the sentence imposed for
his guilty plea conviction for illegal reentry following deportation. Infante was
sentenced at the bottom of his advisory sentencing guidelines range to a 41-
month term of imprisonment. He contends in light of his personal circumstances
and the circumstances surrounding his offense that his sentence is unreasonable
because it was greater than necessary to achieve the sentencing goals set forth
in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a).
*
Pursuant to 5TH CIR. R. 47.5, the court has determined that this opinion
should not be published and is not precedent except under the limited
circumstances set forth in 5TH CIR. R. 47.5.4.
No. 08-50203
Following United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005), we review a
district court’s sentencing decision for reasonableness in light of the sentencing
factors in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). Gall v. United States, 128 S. Ct. 586, 596-97
(2007). First, we consider whether the sentence imposed is procedurally sound.
Id. at 597. Thereafter, we consider whether the sentence is substantively
reasonable, using an abuse-of-discretion standard. Id. A sentence imposed
within a properly calculated guideline range is entitled to a rebuttable
presumption of reasonableness. Rita v. United States, 127 S. Ct. 2456, 2462
(2007); United States v. Alonzo, 435 F.3d 551, 554 (5th Cir. 2006).
Citing the Supreme Court’s decisions in Kimbrough v. United States, 128
S. Ct. 558, 575 (2007), and Rita, 127 S. Ct. at 2462, Infante argues that the
within-guidelines sentence imposed in his case should not be accorded a
presumption of reasonableness. Infante contends that the justification for
applying a presumption of reasonableness in his case is undercut because
U.S.S.G. § 2L1.2(b), the Guideline used to calculate his advisory sentencing
guidelines range, was not promulgated according to usual Sentencing
Commission procedures and did not take into account “empirical data and
national experience.” He portrays the Kimbrough decision as having “suggested”
that the appellate presumption should not be applied to Guidelines that did not
take account of this data and experience.
Our reading of Kimbrough does not reveal any such suggestion. The
question presented in Kimbrough was whether “a sentence . . . outside the
guidelines range is per se unreasonable when it is based on a disagreement with
the sentencing disparity for crack and powder cocaine offenses.” 128 S. Ct. at
564. Speaking specifically to the crack cocaine Guidelines, the Court simply
ruled that “it would not be an abuse of discretion for a district court to conclude
when sentencing a particular defendant that the crack/powder disparity yields
a sentence ‘greater than necessary’ to achieve § 3553(a)’s purposes, even in a
mine-run case.” Id. at 575. In Kimbrough, the Court said nothing of the
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No. 08-50203
applicability of the presumption of reasonableness. Moreover, the appellate
presumption’s continued applicability to § 2L1.2 sentences is supported by this
court’s decision in United States v. Campos-Maldonado, 531 F.3d 337, 338-39
(5th Cir. 2008), cert. denied, ___ S. Ct. ___, 2008 WL 3996218 (Oct. 6, 2008) (No.
08-5988), which involved a similar challenge to § 2L1.2.
The appellate presumption is therefore applicable in this case. The district
court heard Infante’s arguments for a non-guidelines sentence based on his
particular circumstances and concluded that a sentence within the guidelines
range was appropriate in light of those considerations. Infante has not
demonstrated that his sentence was an abuse of discretion by the district court.
See Rita, 127 S. Ct. at 2469 (holding that a sentencing judge, who had listened
to the defendant’s arguments in support of a below-guidelines sentence, provided
sufficient explanation for rejecting those arguments when he found that the
defendant’s circumstances were insufficient to warrant a sentence lower than
the guidelines range); Alonzo, 435 F.3d at 554. Accordingly, the judgment of the
district court is AFFIRMED.
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