United States v. Canales-Ramos ( 2021 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 21-1141
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Appellee,
v.
JORGE MARCELO CANALES-RAMOS,
Defendant, Appellant.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Francisco A. Besosa, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Lynch and Selya, Circuit Judges,
and McCafferty,* District Judge.
Hector Sueiro-Alvarez, with whom Eric Alexander Vos, Federal
Public Defender, Franco L. Pérez-Redondo, Assistant Federal Public
Defender, Supervisor, Appeals Division, and Kevin E. Lerman,
Research and Writing Specialist, were on brief, for appellant.
David C. Bornstein, Assistant United States Attorney, with
whom W. Stephen Muldrow, United States Attorney, and Mariana E.
Bauzá-Almonte, Assistant United States Attorney, Chief, Appellate
Division, were on brief, for appellee.
* Of the District of New Hampshire, sitting by designation.
December 9, 2021
SELYA, Circuit Judge. Defendant-appellant Jorge Marcelo
Canales-Ramos seeks compassionate release based on what he alleges
to be "extraordinary and compelling" reasons pursuant to 18 U.S.C.
§ 3582(c)(1)(A), as amended by the First Step Act, Pub. L. No.
115-391, § 603(b), 132 Stat. 5194, 5239 (2018). The defendant
contends that the district court abused its discretion when it
denied his motion for such relief. After careful consideration,
we affirm.
I
We briefly rehearse the relevant facts and travel of the
case. In September of 2011, the defendant was arrested aboard a
vessel — in waters off the coast of the U.S. Virgin Islands — and
found to be in possession of 48.2 kilograms of cocaine. At the
time, the defendant was serving a five-year term of supervised
release imposed after his guilty plea to drug-related charges in
the District of Puerto Rico (D.P.R.).
In the wake of the defendant's 2011 arrest, the D.P.R.
court convened a revocation hearing. The defendant admitted that
he had violated the conditions of his supervised release by leaving
Puerto Rico without permission and by engaging in renewed criminal
activity. On February 22, 2012, the district court imposed a
thirty-month revocation sentence and ordered that sentence "to be
served consecutively to any other term of imprisonment currently
being served or to be imposed upon" the defendant.
- 3 -
By the time the revocation sentence was imposed, the
defendant had pleaded guilty in the District of the Virgin Islands
(D.V.I.) to drug-conspiracy and drug-possession charges. See 21
U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 846. Even so, the D.V.I. court did not
convene the disposition hearing until May 9, 2012. At that
hearing, the D.V.I. court imposed a 168-month term of immurement
on each of the two counts of conviction and ordered those sentences
to run concurrently. These concurrent terms of immurement were
later reduced to 135 months pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2) and
Guideline Amendment 782, USSG App. C Supp., amend. 782.
Neither the D.V.I. sentence nor the D.V.I. judgment
mentioned the D.P.R. revocation sentence. Administrative records
show that, as of last October, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP)
calculated a total aggregate incarcerative term — encompassing
both the D.V.I. and D.P.R. sentences — of 165 months. That
calculation reflected that the D.V.I. and D.P.R. sentences were
run consecutively.
After unsuccessfully pursuing an administrative
grievance with the BOP, the defendant filed a pro se motion in the
D.P.R. case. That motion (filed in November of 2019) sought the
appointment of counsel to bring a post-conviction challenge
concerning the consecutive nature of his revocation sentence. The
defendant predicated this initiative on our decision in United
States v. Almonte-Reyes, 814 F.3d 24 (1st Cir. 2016) — a decision
- 4 -
that we discuss below. See infra Part III(B). Following the
appointment of counsel, the defendant filed the instant motion for
compassionate release, alleging extraordinary and compelling
reasons, in November of 2020. See 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i).
This was not his first such motion: he had filed a similar motion
in the D.V.I. case a few months earlier.
In both his D.V.I. and D.P.R. compassionate-release
motions, the defendant alleged, among other things, that his pre-
existing medical infirmities, along with the conditions of his
confinement, posed a substantial risk of severe illness should he
contract the COVID-19 virus. This risk, he alleged, constituted
an "extraordinary and compelling" reason for a sentence reduction.
Id. § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i). In particular, the defendant pointed to
his hypertension, hyperlipidemia, liver disease, diabetes, and
pancreatitis, together with the potentially elevated risk of
illness from COVID-19 posed by his race (Black) and his ethnicity
(Latino). His D.P.R. motion — but not his D.V.I. motion — recast
the alleged Almonte-Reyes error as a further reason warranting
compassionate release.
While these motions were pending, the defendant
contracted COVID-19 in January of 2021. He advised the D.P.R.
court of this fact, and the court extended the government's
deadline to file a sur-reply. The government filed a sur-reply
about a week later. On the same day, the D.P.R. court denied the
- 5 -
defendant's compassionate-release motion. In its order, the court
noted that it had reviewed certain pertinent materials, including
the parties' briefs and the defendant's medical records. It
concluded in relevant part that the defendant "ha[d] not identified
any extraordinary or compelling reason for reduction of his
sentence." It also reiterated that no error had been committed in
the imposition of the defendant's "sentences to run concurrently
but consecutively to his sentence on revocation."
This timely appeal ensued. The defendant's counterpart
D.V.I. motion for compassionate release remains pending.
II
Our review of a district court's denial of a sentence-
reduction motion pursuant to section 3582(c)(1)(A) is for abuse of
discretion. See United States v. Saccoccia, 10 F.4th 1, 4-5 (1st
Cir. 2021). This is a respectful standard under which we assess
factual determinations for clear error, evaluate claims of legal
error de novo, and afford judgment calls a measure of deference.
See id.At the outset, the defendant draws our attention to a
growing consensus among the courts of appeals. This consensus
holds that even though the compassionate-release statute requires
a district court to ensure that any sentence reduction is
"consistent" with "applicable" policy statements issued by the
Sentencing Commission, 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A), the current
- 6 -
policy statement is not "applicable" to prisoner-initiated motions
for compassionate release (as contrasted with motions brought by
the BOP). See Saccoccia, 10 F.4th at 7-8 (collecting cases). We
previously have explained the circumstances giving rise to the
doubts about whether the current policy statement is "applicable"
to prisoner-initiated motions, see id., and it would serve no
useful purpose to repastinate that ground. As we explain below,
the issue is not one that we must decide today.
On the "policy statement" front, the defendant's
argument rests on unbridled speculation that the district court
regarded the current policy statement as applicable and
constrained its analysis accordingly. But the district court made
it sufficiently clear that — regardless of whether the Sentencing
Commission's current policy statement was applicable — the
defendant had failed to demonstrate an extraordinary and
compelling reason.
We need not tarry. The court below plainly concluded —
without any reference to the policy statement — that the defendant
"ha[d] not identified any extraordinary or compelling reason for
reduction of his sentence." This explicit statement shows with
conspicuous clarity that the court considered and rejected all of
the defendant's proffered reasons. Nothing in the court's order
suggests that this blanket rejection was either based on or
constrained by the current policy statement.
- 7 -
To be sure, the parties advanced below differing views
as to whether the current policy statement has any bearing upon
prisoner-initiated compassionate-release motions. The defendant
argued that the current policy statement should be disregarded,
and the government countered that it should be seen as a
constraint. Viewed against this backdrop, the most sensible
understanding of the district court's decision not to address this
dispute is that it did not regard the dispute as outcome-
determinative. Such an understanding is buttressed by what the
district court said in its order. After determining that no
extraordinary and compelling reasons had been identified, the
district court acknowledged that "even if an inmate's health [were]
at risk (which is not the case here), or even if the inmate me[t]
one or more of the parameters" in the policy statement,
compassionate release may be denied. Had the district court
treated the policy statement's categories of extraordinary and
compelling reasons as binding, it would have referred only to those
categories. Here, however, the district court identified an
alternative to those categories (extraordinary and compelling
reasons based on other health risks). The necessary implication
is that the court's analysis was not constrained by the policy
statement.
The defendant's most loudly bruited counter-argument is
that we can infer that the district court thought itself
- 8 -
constrained by the current policy statement because some of the
order's reasoning parallels points made in the government's
briefing. This is a bridge too far and, in any event, the
defendant's observation cuts the other way: despite buying into
several of the government's arguments, the district court felt
free to bypass the "policy statement" contretemps.1 The most
cogent explanation for that bypass is that the issue did not
matter.
The defendant argues, in the alternative, that the
district court's order is ambiguous as to whether it considered
the current policy statement binding. He also argues more broadly
— relying on the Supreme Court's seminal sentencing decisions in
Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 51 (2007), and Rita v. United
States, 551 U.S. 338, 356 (2007) — that the district court failed
adequately to explain its reasons for denying relief. Assuming,
without deciding, that those standards apply on review of a denial
of a compassionate-release motion, the district court's
explanation passes muster. The order is admittedly brief, but in
1 The defendant also tries to bootstrap his argument based on
the district court's generalized reference to cases relied on by
the government. But the defendant identifies only one case that
adhered to the policy statement criteria, see United States v.
Horton, No. 13-16, 2020 WL 4473405, at *3-4 (M.D. Pa. Aug. 4,
2020), and the district court did not mention that case. By
contrast, the case cited by the district court eschewed any
resolution of the "policy statement" issue. See United States v.
Gianelli, 513 F. Supp. 3d 199, 200-01 (D. Mass. 2021).
- 9 -
sentencing matters, "brevity is not to be confused with
inattention." United States v. Dávila-González, 595 F.3d 42, 48
(1st Cir. 2010) (quotations omitted). Rather, the key
consideration is whether the appellate court can discern that the
lower court had "a reasoned basis" for its decision. Rita, 551
U.S. at 356; see Dávila-González, 595 F.3d at 48. As explained
above, we can deduce from the order — despite its brevity — that
the district court concluded that whether the policy statement was
binding made no difference to its determination that the
defendant's asserted reasons were not enough to justify
compassionate release.
The defendant's broader remonstrance fares no better.
He claims that the district court merely adopted the arguments
from the government's briefing but turned a blind eye to the
defendant's arguments regarding his specific medical conditions.
At bottom, though, this is not a complaint that the decision
reflects inadequate reasoning but, rather, a complaint that the
district court's completely adequate reasoning did not mirror the
defendant's views. And — as is evident by our ensuing analysis —
the district court's choice not to embrace the defendant's
medical-related arguments was a reasoned one. Consequently, we
proceed to the defendant's remaining claims of error.
- 10 -
III
This brings us to the meat of the appeal: the district
court's conclusion that the defendant's proffered reasons were
insufficient to warrant compassionate release. The pivotal
question is whether the district court abused its discretion in
holding that the particular circumstances identified by the
defendant failed to justify compassionate release.
Compassionate release under section 3582(c)(1)(A)(i)
demands that there must be a reason or set of reasons for
compassionate release that is both "extraordinary and compelling."
18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i). Congress — apart from stating that
rehabilitation alone "shall not be considered an extraordinary and
compelling reason" for compassionate release — did not elucidate
this standard. 28 U.S.C. § 994(t). Assuming, as we do, that a
court adjudicating a prisoner-initiated motion for compassionate
release may venture beyond the confines of the Sentencing
Commission's current policy guidance, the "extraordinary and
compelling" standard is logically guided by the plain meaning of
those terms.
The plain meaning of "extraordinary" suggests that a
qualifying reason must be a reason that is beyond the mine-run
either in fact or in degree. See Webster's Third New International
Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged 807 (1981) (defining
"extraordinary" as "going beyond what is usual, regular, common,
- 11 -
or customary"); see also United States v. Hunter, 12 F.4th 555,
562 (6th Cir. 2021) (suggesting that such reason must be "most
unusual," "far from common," or "hav[e] little or no precedent").
By the same token, the plain meaning of "compelling" suggests that
a qualifying reason must be a reason that is both powerful and
convincing. See Webster's Third, supra at 462 (defining
"compelling" as "forcing, impelling, [or] driving [circumstance]"
and as "tending to convince or convert by or as if by forcefulness
of evidence"); see also Hunter, 12 F.4th at 562. Benchmarked
against those definitions, the district court acted within the
ambit of its discretion in concluding that the defendant's
proffered reasons for compassionate release fell short.
A
To begin, we consider the defendant's proffered medical
reasons and risk of illness from COVID-19. The district court did
not say whether or not the defendant's proffered medical reasons
exhibited an exceptional medical need. Rather, the court made a
factual determination that although the defendant had pre-existing
medical infirmities and eventually contracted COVID-19, he was
"being closely monitored" and his health was in "stable" condition.
The defendant does not make any concerted effort to
challenge those findings. Nor would such an effort be fruitful:
the defendant's medical records unequivocally show that after
contracting COVID-19, he remained "[a]symptomatic," that BOP
- 12 -
medical staff confirmed that he exhibited no untoward symptoms,
and that his oxygen levels and temperature were well within normal
ranges.
The defendant urges us not to take the medical records
at face value. Despite what they show, he strives to persuade us
that the possibility of severe illness from COVID-19 — considering
factors like his comorbidities and the conditions of his
confinement — remain extraordinary and compelling reasons for
compassionate release.2 We are not persuaded.
The district court made a reasonable risk assessment and
determined that the current state of the defendant's health and
the care that he was receiving weighed against a finding that an
extraordinary and compelling reason existed for compassionate
release. This amounted to a judgment call — a judgment call that
falls within the wide compass of the district court's discretion.
As we have said, "not every complex of health concerns is
sufficient to warrant compassionate release . . . even in the
midst of the COVID-19 pandemic." Saccoccia, 10 F.4th at 5.
Consequently, we leave intact the district court's reasonable
determination that the defendant failed to proffer an
We note that the defendant — who declined the vaccine shortly
2
after the district court's denial of his compassionate-release
motion — has since been fully vaccinated.
- 13 -
extraordinary and compelling medical reason for compassionate
release.
B
We turn next to the defendant's claim that a putative
sentencing error should tip the balance toward finding an
extraordinary and compelling reason for compassionate release.
This claim of error has its genesis in United States v. Almonte-
Reyes, which was decided several years after the defendant's
revocation sentence was imposed. There, we interpreted 18 U.S.C.
§ 3584(a) and determined that a federal sentencing court lacks the
authority to direct that a sentence run consecutively to a federal
sentence yet to be imposed. See 814 F.3d at 28.
The defendant posits that if the D.P.R. court had the
benefit of Almonte-Reyes, it would not have run (and could not
lawfully have run) the revocation sentence consecutive to the not-
yet-imposed D.V.I. sentence. Building on this foundation, the
defendant further posits that if the D.V.I. court had been writing
on a clean slate — unconstrained by the D.P.R. court's declaration
that the revocation sentence was to run consecutively — it would
have imposed its sentence to run concurrently with the D.P.R.
sentence. In that event, the defendant asserts, he already would
have served both sentences in full.
It was comfortably within the district court's
discretion to conclude that the putative sentencing error was
- 14 -
insufficient to warrant compassionate release. Though perhaps
extraordinary, that putative sentencing error did not — in the
circumstances of this case — afford a compelling reason to reduce
the defendant's sentence.3
A close look at the defendant's situation leaves no doubt
that his proffered reason cannot be classified as "compelling."
He has provided no evidence of any disparity between his aggregate
sentence and the aggregate sentence that would have resulted had
both sentences been imposed after Almonte-Reyes. He does no more
than suggest that had his revocation sentence not been imposed in
contravention of the rule later announced in Almonte-Reyes, he
"may" have been eligible for release at an earlier date.
The defendant's suggestion is woven entirely from
gossamer strands of speculation and surmise. He gave the court
below no basis for concluding that, had the D.P.R. court not run
the revocation sentence consecutive to the not-yet-imposed D.V.I.
3 Although the district court reasonably rejected the claim
that the putative sentencing error constituted an extraordinary
and compelling reason for compassionate release, the defendant
seizes on the district court's statement addressing the
consecutive nature of the sentence to suggest that the district
court committed legal error. This is too much of a stretch: the
statement seems to describe the D.V.I. court's judgment (as the
defendant concedes), and the district court's awkward phrasing is
best understood as an attempt to explain that any Almonte-Reyes
error was harmless. Given that the parties' briefs in the court
below were crystal clear on this point, we think that — contrary
to the defendant's importunings — this imprecision affords
insufficient reason to believe that the district court
misunderstood the parties' arguments.
- 15 -
sentence, the D.V.I. court would have proceeded to impose a fully
concurrent sentence. The D.V.I. judgment did not mention the
revocation sentence, and the default rule is that those sentences
would run consecutively. See 18 U.S.C. § 3584(a) ("Multiple terms
of imprisonment imposed at different times run consecutively
unless the court orders that the terms are to run concurrently.").
Apart from the D.V.I. court's silence on the subject, it also
should be noted that the D.V.I. court imposed a downwardly variant
sentence (more than sixty months below the bottom of the guideline
range). Given this largesse, there is nothing to support the
defendant's conjecture that the D.V.I. court — were it free to do
so — would have opted to run the two sentences concurrently. In
short, the defendant offered nothing that might have persuaded the
district court (or this court, for that matter) that the putative
Almonte-Reyes error lengthened his aggregate sentence at all.
So, too, the defendant failed to present any
idiosyncratic circumstances sufficient to buttress his claim. The
district court's appraisal of the sentencing factors suggests that
it believed the sentence to be appropriate, given the nature of
the offense and the history and characteristics of the offender.
Even though the defendant offered evidence of his claimed
rehabilitation, the district court — after it marshalled various
- 16 -
sentencing considerations militating against compassionate release
— was unconvinced.4
The defendant counters that the putative Almonte-Reyes
error is both extraordinary and compelling, asserting that it was
a non-retroactive decision that could not have been the basis for
any timely post-conviction challenge. In mounting this assertion,
he draws on a handful of decisions in which courts have
acknowledged that claims involving non-retroactive changes in law
affecting sentencing exposure may constitute an extraordinary and
compelling reason sufficient to justify compassionate release.
See, e.g., United States v. Maumau, 993 F.3d 821, 837 (10th Cir.
2021); United States v. McGee, 992 F.3d 1035, 1047-48 (10th Cir.
2021); United States v. McCoy, 981 F.3d 271, 285-87 (4th Cir.
2020). Even if we accept, for argument's sake, the logic of the
decisions that he embraces, those cases do not go so far as to
hold that such a change in the law, without more, may comprise an
extraordinary and compelling reason sufficient to warrant
compassionate release. Rather, they suggest that the changed legal
4Because the district court reasonably concluded that the
defendant failed to demonstrate an extraordinary and compelling
reason for compassionate release, we need not address in detail
its review of the universe of sentencing factors. We note,
however, that a district court's supportable determination that
the section 3553(a) factors weigh against the granting of
compassionate release constitutes an independently sufficient
basis to uphold a denial of such relief. See Saccoccia, 10 F.4th
at 4.
- 17 -
landscape must be considered in view of a defendant's particular
circumstances. See, e.g., Maumau, 993 F.3d at 838 (Tymkovich, J.,
concurring) ("[A] district court may consider the legislative
change to the stacking provision only in the context of an
individualized review of a movant's circumstances."); McGee, 992
F.3d at 1048 (reasoning that the First Step Act's non-retroactive
amendments might rise to the level of "extraordinary and compelling
reasons" when considered in combination with "a defendant's unique
circumstances"); McCoy, 981 F.3d at 285-87 (holding that the First
Step Act's changes to section 924(c), in combination with the
resulting "disparity," may amount to "extraordinary and
compelling" reasons). As we previously have stated, the
circumstances the defendant presented were insufficient to make
his claim compelling.
That ends this aspect of the matter. We hold that the
district court did not abuse its discretion in rejecting the
defendant's plea that the putative Almonte-Reyes error warranted
a reduction of his sentence.
IV
We need go no further. The short of it is that our
examination of the record reveals that the court below did not
trespass — or even closely approach — the margins of its broad
discretion in denying the defendant's compassionate-release
- 18 -
motion. For the reasons elucidated above, the judgment of the
district court is
Affirmed.
- 19 -