United States v. Luna-Sanchez ( 2000 )

F I L E D
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
OCT 26 2000
TENTH CIRCUIT
PATRICK FISHER
Clerk
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
No. 00-4042
(D.C. No. 99-CR-561-W)
PEDRO ENRIQUE LUNA-
(D. Utah)
SANCHEZ,
Defendant-Appellant.
ORDER AND JUDGMENT *
Before SEYMOUR, Chief Judge, EBEL and BRISCOE, Circuit Judges. **
Defendant-Appellant Pedro Enrique Luna-Sanchez (“Luna-Sanchez”)
appeals his sentence for illegal re-entry of a previously deported alien, in
violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326. Luna-Sanchez pled guilty to this charge on
November 15, 1999, two weeks before the United States Attorney’s Office
* This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the
doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. This court
generally disfavors the citation of orders and judgments; nevertheless, an order
and judgment may be cited under the terms and conditions of 10th Cir. R. 36.3.
** After examining the briefs and the appellate record, this three-judge
panel has determined unanimously that oral argument would not be of material
assistance in the determination of this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2); 10th
Cir. R. 34.1(G). The case is therefore ordered submitted without oral argument.
handling his case offered, for a period of a few weeks in December 1999, to
recommend a downward departure of two offense levels for several defendants
who agreed to plead guilty under 8 U.S.C. § 1326, waive the pre-sentence report
and agree to immediate sentencing. The government did not make this offer to
Luna-Sanchez, so Luna-Sanchez requested that the district court grant him the
downward departure absent a motion by the government. The district court
declined to grant the downward departure but sentenced Luna-Sanchez at the low
end of the applicable guideline range. 1
Luna-Sanchez now argues that the district court erred in not granting him
the downward departure that was offered to other similarly situated defendants
but that was not offered to Luna-Sanchez prior to his entering a guilty plea.
At his sentencing hearing, on February 18, 2000, Luna-Sanchez argued that
he was entitled, as a matter of due process and equal protection, to the same
downward departure that the prosecution had offered to similarly situated
defendants. The district court rejected Luna-Sanchez’s due process and equal
protection arguments and denied his request for a downward departure. In
making its determination, the district court acknowledged that a motion by the
1
Based upon the pre-sentence report, Luna-Sanchez was subject to a
Sentencing Guidelines range of 57 to 71 months. See Appellee’s Brief at 3. The
district court sentenced him to 57 months, the lowest available sentence within the
applicable guideline range.
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government was not required for the court to grant a downward departure under §
5K2.0. 2 (See Sent. Hr’g Tr. at 9, lines 2-6.) The court nevertheless stated that it
relies heavily upon government recommendations (see Sent. Hr’g Tr. at 15, lines
9-11), and that it has never granted a downward departure under § 5K2.0 absent a
motion from the government (see Sent. Hr’g Tr. at 14, lines 7-9). The district
court also noted that the disparity between the sentence received by Luna-Sanchez
and the sentences received by other similarly situated defendants would not, in its
opinion, be a legal basis on which an appellate court could set aside Luna-
Sanchez’s sentence. (See Sent. Hr’g Tr. at 13, lines 2-13 (rejecting defense
2
Section 5K2.0 of the Sentencing Guidelines states:
Under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(b), the sentencing court may impose a
sentence outside the range established by the applicable guidelines, if
the court finds “that there exists an aggravating or mitigating
circumstance of a kind, or to a degree, not adequately taken into
consideration by the Sentencing Commission in formulating the
Guidelines that should result in a sentence different from that
described.” . . . The decision as to whether and to what extent departure
is warranted rests with the sentencing court on a case specific basis.
See U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual § 5K2.0 (Policy Statement) (1999).
Although the government later implied that the district court did not have
discretion to grant the departure under § 5K2.0 absent a motion from the government
(see Sent. Hr’g Tr. at 14-15 (asking the district court to find that, “should [it] have
had discretion [it] would decline to exercise [its] discretion to depart downward on
this basis” (emphasis added)), the court did not expressly adopt that interpretation
(see Sent. Hr’g Tr. at 15 (declining to make that finding because the court was “not
sure what [it] would do on that . . .”).
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counsel’s request for an evidentiary hearing on the extent to which the defendants
were similarly situated.)) Finally, the court noted that the other cases in which the
prosecution had requested a downward departure were “far more sympathetic
cases than this,” (see Sent. Hr’g Tr. at 10, line 10) and that he likely would not
have granted the downward departure in those cases if the other defendants had
criminal records as serious as Luna-Sanchez’s (see Sent. Hr’g Tr. at 10, lines 12-
22).
It is well-settled in this circuit that the court of appeals lacks jurisdiction to
review a sentencing court’s discretionary refusal to depart from the Sentencing
Guideline’s sentencing range in a given case unless the refusal to depart was
based upon an impermissible factor such as race or gender, or the district court
incorrectly believed it did not have authority to depart under the Sentencing
Guidelines. See United States v. Guidry, 199 F.3d 1150, 1161 (10th Cir. 1999);
see also United States v. Castillo, 140 F.3d 874, 887 (10th Cir. 1998) (“[The
court] of appeals cannot exercise jurisdiction to review a sentencing court’s
refusal to depart from the sentencing guidelines except in the very rare
circumstance that the district court states that it does not have the authority to
depart from the sentencing guidelines range for the entire class of circumstances
proffered by the defendant.”); United States v. Rowen, 73 F.3d 1061, 1063 (10th
Cir. 1996) (“We have jurisdiction to review a district court’s refusal to depart
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downward only when ‘the district court refused to depart because it erroneously
interpreted the Guidelines as depriving it of the power to depart based on the
proffered circumstances . . . ’”) (quoting United States v. Barrera-Barron, 996
F.2d 244, 245 (10th Cir. 1993)). We will not find that the district court was
unaware of its discretion to depart downward from the Guidelines unless the
judge’s language “unambiguously states that the judge does not believe he has
authority to downward depart.” United States v. Rodriguez, 30 F.3d 1318, 1319
(10th Cir. 1994); see also id. (“[W]e treat ambiguous statements made by district
judges as though the judge was aware of his or her legal authority to depart but
chose instead, in an exercise of discretion, not to depart.”); Rowen, 73 F.3d at
1063 (stating that “[w]e do not assume that silence indicates ignorance”).
Here, a review of the record does not reveal any unambiguous statement by
the district court that it lacked discretion to downward depart from the Sentencing
Guidelines. To the contrary, the court acknowledged that it could depart from the
Guidelines under § 5K2.0 absent a motion from the government, but that Luna-
Sanchez’s criminal record militated strongly against a downward departure.
Under these circumstances, this court simply cannot conclude that the district
court erroneously believed that it lacked discretionary authority to depart from the
Guidelines in this case. We must, therefore, conclude that we lack jurisdiction to
review the district court’s decision. See Rodriguez, 30 F.3d at 1319 (“Absent
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such a misunderstanding on the sentencing judge’s part, illegality or an incorrect
application of the guidelines, we will not review the denial of a downward
departure.”) (citing United States v. Garcia, 919 F.2d 1478, 1481 (10th Cir.
1990)).
For the foregoing reasons, we DISMISS Luna-Sanchez’s appeal of the
district court’s sentencing decision.
ENTERED FOR THE COURT
David M. Ebel
Circuit Judge
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