Case: 20-20634 Document: 00516233996 Page: 1 Date Filed: 03/10/2022
United States Court of Appeals
for the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
FILED
March 10, 2022
No. 20-20634
Lyle W. Cayce
Clerk
United States of America,
Plaintiff—Appellee,
versus
Rafael Ramon Rodriguez,
Defendant—Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Texas
USDC No. 4:14-CR-94-15
Before Southwick, Haynes, and Higginson, Circuit Judges.
Stephen A. Higginson, Circuit Judge:
I.
Petitioner Rafael Ramon Rodriguez seeks review of a district
court order denying his motion for compassionate release. We
AFFIRM the district court’s decision to deny the motion for
reconsideration.
II.
Rafael Ramon Rodriguez pleaded guilty to conspiring to
possess with intent to distribute a controlled substance. The district
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No. 20-20634
court sentenced Rodriguez to 168 months of imprisonment and three
years of supervised release. Rodriguez’s direct appeal was dismissed
as frivolous pursuant to Anders v. California, 386 U.S. 738 (1967).
Thereafter, on July 9, 2020, Rodriguez, proceeding pro se, filed
a motion pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A) requesting
compassionate release or release to home confinement. Rodriguez
stated that he had not exhausted his administrative remedies and
requested that the district court waive the exhaustion requirement.
Rodriguez argued that extraordinary and compelling reasons
warranted his release, including the COVID-19 pandemic, his
untreated “heart failure with left ventricular hypertrophy” resulting
in his heart functioning at only 15% of its capacity, and that inmates
and staff at his facility have tested positive for the virus. Rodriguez
also asserted that the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factors supported his
release, emphasizing that he is not violent and has no prior criminal
history and that he is currently pursuing his GED. Finally, Rodriguez
noted that he has served over three years of his sentence and
contended that he has the full support of his family. The district court
appointed counsel to represent Rodriguez in connection with his
compassionate release motion.
The Government opposed Rodriguez’s motion, asserting that
he had not exhausted his administrative remedies and that he had not
shown extraordinary and compelling reasons warranting release. In his
counseled reply, Rodriguez submitted proof of exhaustion, argued the
merits of his motion, and contended that he also suffered from
hypertension and obesity. The Government filed a response to
Rodriguez’s reply in which it conceded that Rodriguez had exhausted
his administrative remedies.
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No. 20-20634
On November 24, 2020, the district court denied Rodriguez’s
motion. The district court rejected Rodriguez’s contention that his
health and the outbreak of the virus at his prison constituted
extraordinary and compelling reasons. The court observed that a
defendant could establish “a specific and imminent threat by showing
an ongoing and severe outbreak at the prison,” or by showing that
“the prison prevents inmates from social distancing.”
The district court determined that there had been only seven
cases of COVID-19 at his facility and no deaths; the district court also
noted that Rodriguez had failed to identify any practices within the
facility that made transmission of the virus more likely. The district
court concluded that “[w]ithout an ongoing outbreak or other
practices preventing Rodriguez from social distancing, he has not
shown that he faces a specific and imminent threat of infection.”
Finally, the court determined that Rodriguez had not shown
extraordinary and compelling reasons supporting release because he
was only 47 years old, his heart condition is not acute and his
hypertension is managed by medication, and he had only served 35%
of his sentence.
Rodriguez filed a timely notice of appeal, yet then also filed in
the district court a motion for reconsideration of the order denying his
motion for compassionate release. 1 The district court denied the
motion for reconsideration, and briefing in this court was resumed.
1
Simultaneously, Rodriguez filed in this court an unopposed motion to suspend
briefing, or in the alternative, an extension to file his opening brief, pending the district
court’s ruling on his motion for reconsideration. This court granted the motion to suspend
the briefing schedule.
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III.
A district court’s decision to deny a prisoner’s § 3582(c)(1)(A)
motion is reviewed for abuse of discretion. See United States v.
Thompson, 984 F.3d 431, 433 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 141 S. Ct. 2688
(2021). A district “court abuses its discretion if it bases its decision on
an error of law or a clearly erroneous assessment of the evidence.”
United States v. Chambliss, 948 F.3d 691, 693 (5th Cir. 2020) (internal
quotation marks and citation omitted).
IV.
There is little developed guidance on what constitutes
extraordinary and compelling reasons for a sentence reduction
because neither § 3582 nor the Guidelines fully define or limit those
reasons. See United States v. Shkambi, 993 F.3d 388, 391-92 (5th Cir.
2021). The district court in this case first, in three paragraphs, laid out
the relevant legal standard, before considering whether Rodriguez
presented extraordinary and compelling circumstances that
warranted release.
The district court then, in its analysis, explained that
Rodriguez could be released if he faced a specific and imminent threat
of infection to establish extraordinary and compelling circumstances
warranting compassionate release. The district court concluded that
Rodriguez had not satisfied this burden because his facility had only
seven cases of COVID-19 and no deaths, protective measures
implemented by the prison had apparently curbed the spread of the
virus, and Rodriguez had failed to identify any of his facility’s
practices that made transmission of the virus more likely.
The district court’s observation that Rodriguez might warrant
relief with a showing of specific and imminent threat of infection is not
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inconsistent with this court’s pronouncement that a generalized fear
of COVID-19 does not automatically entitle a prisoner to release. See
Thompson, 984 F.3d at 435. Moreover, while our court has never
explicitly articulated that a defendant must show a specific and
imminent threat of infection as a prerequisite to showing
extraordinary and compelling reasons, we have indicated that district
courts should make an independent determination of extraordinary
and compelling reasons supporting early release. See Thompson, 984
F.3d at 433; see also United States v. Gonzalez, 819 F. App’x 283, 284-
85 (5th Cir. 2020) (holding that the district court’s reference to §
1B1.13 could be read as one step in its own determination of whether
extraordinary and compelling reasons warranted a sentence
reduction). Cognizant that the preponderance of relevant law on this
issue has emerged at the district court level, the district court cited
more than half a dozen cases in which trial courts have engaged in
analogous analysis. See United States v. Ferguson, No. 12-CR-600-4,
2020 WL 3632468, at *3 (S.D. Tex. July 3, 2020); United States v.
Gibson, No. 12-CR-600-2, 2020 WL 2749759, at *3 (S.D. Tex. May
27, 2020); United States v. Delgado, No. 3:18-CR-17, 2020 WL
2464685, at *5 (D. Conn. Apr. 30, 2020); United States v. Howard, No.
4:15-CR-00018, 2020 WL 2200855, at *4 (E.D.N.C. May 6, 2020);
United States v. Barber, No. 6:18-CR-00446, 2020 WL 2404679, at *4
(D. Or. May 12, 2020); United States v. Foreman, No. 3:19-CR-62,
2020 WL 2315908, at *4 (D. Conn. May 11, 2020); United States v.
Sawicz, No. 08-CR-287, 2020 WL 1815851, at *2 (E.D.N.Y. Apr. 10,
2020); United States v. Lacy, No. 15-CR-30038, 2020 WL 2093363, at
*2 (C.D. Ill. May 1, 2020).
In this case, Rodriguez suffers from hypertension and obesity,
and his hypertension is apparently controlled through medication.
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Thompson, 984 F.3d at 432-33 & n.1. Additionally, although Rodriguez
suffered a heart attack in 2014, he has not experienced serious heart
problems since then. Furthermore, Rodriguez has served less than
half of his 168-month sentence. Thompson, 984 F.3d at 435. Relatedly,
we noted in Thompson that the movant there could “point to no case
in which a court, on account of the pandemic, has granted
compassionate release to an otherwise healthy defendant with two,
well-controlled, chronic medical conditions and who had completed
less than half of his sentence.” Id. Accordingly, we hold that the
district court did not abuse its discretion, factually or legally, by
deciding the conditions at Rodriguez’s prison and his medical
conditions were insufficiently compelling and extraordinary to entitle
him to relief. 2 See Thompson, 984 F.3d at 433-35.
V.
For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM the district court’s
decision to deny Rodriguez’s motion for compassionate release.
2
The district court’s denial of Rodriguez’s reconsideration motion reiterated its
earlier “reasons… weighing against Rodriguez’s early release,” adding only that Rodriguez
“has recently recovered from COVID-19, with apparently few symptoms and no noted
complications.”
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