United States v. Munoz-Fontanez ( 2023 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 18-2236
UNITED STATES,
Appellee,
v.
EMANUEL MUÑOZ-FONTANEZ,
Defendant, Appellant.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Francisco A. Besosa, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Kayatta and Howard, Circuit Judges.*
Heather Clark and Clark Law Office on brief for appellant.
W. Stephen Muldrow, United States Attorney, Mariana E. Bauzá-
Almonte, Assistant United States Attorney, Chief, Appellate
Division, and B. Kathryn Debrason, Assistant United States
Attorney, on brief for appellee.
February 28, 2023
* This opinion is filed by a quorum of the panel pursuant to
28 U.S.C. § 46(d).
HOWARD, Circuit Judge. Puerto Rico Police Department
("PRPD") officers arrested Emanuel Muñoz-Fontanez ("Muñoz") after
searching his home and car and finding a substantial cache of guns
and ammunition along with thirty-two pills of Oxycodone and Xanax
and four small plastic bags of marijuana. A federal grand jury
subsequently indicted him on six counts. Pursuant to a plea
agreement, Muñoz pled guilty to two charges, possessing firearms
in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, 18 U.S.C. §
924(c)(1)(A)(i), and possession of marijuana with intent to
distribute, 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), (b)(1)(D). The government
agreed to request dismissal of the other four charges,1 and the
parties agreed to recommend a combined sentence between 96 and 120
months in prison. The aggregated Guideline Sentencing Range
("GSR") for the crimes was sixty to sixty-six months in prison,
but the district court varied upwards to impose a sentence of 144
months. Muñoz appeals the sentence.
Muñoz first decries the adequacy of the district court's
explanation for his sentence. Unpreserved below, this procedural
reasonableness argument is reviewed for plain error. United States
v. Soto-Soto, 855 F.3d 445, 448 & n.1 (1st Cir. 2017). Inadequate
explanation is a recognized sentencing error, Gall v. United
1 The district court granted the dismissal. One of the
dismissed charges, an alleged violation of 18 U.S.C. §
924(c)(1)(B)(ii), carried a thirty-year statutory minimum
sentence.
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States, 552 U.S. 38, 51 (2007), and "the greater the deviation
[from the GSR], the greater the burden of justifying the sentence
imposed." United States v. Montero-Montero, 817 F.3d 35, 37 (1st
Cir. 2016). The sentence here was nearly two and a half times the
GSR.2
The court offered no explicit rationale tying the
instant facts to the statutory sentencing goals. After briefly
hearing arguments from each party, the court described the plea
agreement and the calculation of the GSR (including Muñoz's
complete lack of criminal history). It then noted Muñoz's age,
education level, employment history, and prior drug use.3 Next,
it recounted the uncontested facts of his arrest.4 Finally, after
noting the parties' recommended range and requested sentences, the
The sentence was also two years longer than the top end of
2
the recommended sentence range in the plea agreement, a sentence
range that was calculated explicitly taking account of the
dismissed charges.
In his PSR, Muñoz admitted to using approximately five
3
cigarettes of marijuana in the 13 years since the tenth grade.
The court described this as "a history of using marijuana since he
was in the tenth grade."
When arrested, Muñoz had five guns (one was modified to
4
enable automatic firing), 886 rounds of ammunition, 14 magazines,
and the drugs described at the beginning of this opinion. His
phone had two videos of him shooting a firearm and a third video
depicting large bags of marijuana, scales with marijuana being
weighed, large amounts of cash, and the defendant saying "let's
make some money" ("vamos a hacer chavos"). The phone also
contained pictures of deceased individuals who, according to PRPD,
had been recently killed in the area.
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court stated: "The Court finds that the sentences to which the
parties agreed do not reflect the seriousness of the offense, do
not promote respect for the law, do not protect the public from
further crimes by Mr. Muñoz, and do not address the issues of
deterrence and punishment."
Other aspects of the record do not clarify the court's
thinking. In the written statement of reasons, the court again
recounted the facts of the arrest without explaining why those
facts supported the result. The record does reveal that, in
arguing for a 120-month sentence, the government focused on the
destructive nature of an automatic weapon that Muñoz possessed and
its connection with a drug crime, as well as the number of firearms
and amount of ammunition he possessed. And, to be sure, in some
circumstances we can infer a court's reasoning from the parties'
arguments, United States v. Ramos, 763 F.3d 45, 57 (1st Cir. 2014).
But the court's mere listing of the facts of the arrest, without
emphasis on any particular circumstance, makes it impossible to
tell whether it was the automatic weapon or something else that
motivated its decision.5
The absence of explanation here contravenes Congress's
clear and "well known" command that the courts explain themselves
5 The government did not file a sentencing memorandum, so we
can only use the statements made at the sentencing hearing to infer
the sentencing court's reasoning.
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when announcing sentences. United States v. Mantha, 944 F.3d 352,
357 (1st Cir. 2019); 18 U.S.C. § 3553(c)(2).6 Though plain error
is a demanding standard, failure to explain a sentence "cast[s] a
shadow over the court's reputation for fairness." Montero-
Montero, 817 F.3d at 37. And "we cannot rule out the possibility
of a lower sentence until the district court explains its reasons
for selecting" the sentence. Mantha, 944 F.3d at 357-58. We have
overturned upwardly variant sentences under plain error review
when the explanations were similarly lacking. See Mantha, 944
F.3d at 357-58; Montero-Montero, 817 F.3d at 37-38; United States
v. Rivera-Gonzalez, 809 F.3d 706, 711-12 (1st Cir. 2016). When
imposing a significant variance, a sentencing court must make clear
which specific facts of the case motivated its decision and why
those facts led to its decision.
Muñoz also argues that his sentence is too long, but,
given the procedural errors, we need not address that point; nor
are we in an advantageous position to do so without the benefit of
the district court's thinking.
Vacated and remanded for resentencing consistent with
this opinion.
6 Although Muñoz did not cite this statute, cases he relies
on use it as the basis for discussion. See, e.g., United States
v. Brown, 808 F.3d 865, 871-74 (D.C. Cir. 2015).
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