United States v. Fuentes-Ramirez , 417 F. App'x 324 ( 2011 )

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 10-4484
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
CARLOS EDUARDO FUENTES-RAMIREZ, a/k/a Fuentes Carlos
Ramirez, a/k/a Carlos Edward Rameriz, a/k/a Juan Doe, a/k/a
Jose Carlos Fuentes R, a/k/a Alfredo Fuentes, a/k/a Carlos
Alfredo, a/k/a Jose E. Rodriquez, a/k/a Alfredo Calderon,
a/k/a Carlos Edwardo Ramirez, a/k/a Carlos Edwardo Rameriz,
Carlos Edward Ramirez,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern
District of Virginia, at Alexandria. Gerald Bruce Lee, District
Judge. (1:09-cr-00480-GBL-1)
Submitted: February 28, 2011 Decided: March 18, 2011
Before NIEMEYER and SHEDD, Circuit Judges, and HAMILTON, Senior
Circuit Judge.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Michael S. Nachmanoff, Federal Public Defender, Frances H.
Pratt, Geremy C. Kamens, Assistant Federal Public Defenders,
Alexandria, Virginia, for Appellant. Neil H. MacBride, United
States Attorney, William H. Jones, II, Special Assistant United
States Attorney, Alexandria, Virginia, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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PER CURIAM:
Carlos Eduardo Fuentes-Ramirez appeals his forty-
eight-month prison sentence for one count of illegally re-
entering the United States after an aggravated felony conviction
in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326(a), (b)(2) (2006). Fuentes-
Ramirez contends that his sentence is procedurally unreasonable
because the district court failed to adequately place an
individualized assessment on the record at the sentencing
hearing. Finding no reversible error, we affirm.
We review a sentence under a deferential abuse-of-
discretion standard. Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 51
(2007). The first step in this review requires us to inspect
for procedural reasonableness by ensuring that the district
court committed no significant procedural errors, such as
improperly calculating the Guidelines range, failing to consider
the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) (2006) factors, or failing to adequately
explain the sentence. United States v. Boulware, 604 F.3d 832,
837-38 (4th Cir. 2010). We then consider the substantive
reasonableness of the sentence imposed, taking into account the
totality of the circumstances. Gall, 552 U.S. at 51. On
appeal, we presume that a sentence within a properly-calculated
Guidelines range is reasonable. United States v. Allen, 491
F.3d 178, 193 (4th Cir. 2007). That presumption may be rebutted
by a showing “that the sentence is unreasonable when measured
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against the § 3553(a) factors.” United States v. Montes-Pineda,
445 F.3d 375, 379 (4th Cir. 2006) (internal quotation marks
omitted).
When sentencing, a district court should first
correctly calculate the applicable Guidelines range and
thereafter give the parties the opportunity to argue for
whatever sentence they deem appropriate. United States v.
Hernandez, 603 F.3d 267, 270 (4th Cir. 2010). The sentencing
court must consider all of the § 3553(a) factors and conduct an
individualized assessment of the facts before it. See id. at
270-71. The district court’s explanation for imposing a
sentence must be “sufficient ‘to satisfy the appellate court
that [the district court] has considered the parties’ arguments
and has a reasoned basis for exercising [its] own legal
decisionmaking authority.’” Boulware, 604 F.3d at 837 (quoting
Rita v. United States, 551 U.S. 338, 356 (2007)). But when a
sentencing court decides to simply apply the Guidelines, “doing
so will not necessarily require lengthy explanation.” Rita, 551
U.S. at 356.
Fuentes-Ramirez argues on appeal that the district
court’s explanation was deficient in two respects: (1) the
explanation could apply to many other defendants and was
therefore not an individualized assessment; and (2) the
explanation failed to address Fuentes-Ramirez’s argument that
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one of his prior convictions was effectively “double counted”
because it elevated both his offense level and his criminal
history under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual (2009).
Fuentes-Ramirez preserved these procedural issues for appeal by
arguing for a sentence more lenient than that ultimately imposed
by the district court. See United States v. Lynn, 592 F.3d 572,
578 (4th Cir. 2010).
It is true that many other defendants who are brought
before the district courts on charges of illegal re-entry are in
similar life circumstances as Fuentes-Ramirez. But the fact
that the district court’s explanation of its reasons for
imposing Fuentes-Ramirez’s sentence may apply equally to other
similarly-situated defendants does not defeat the
individualization of the court’s assessment. It is just these
sorts of garden-variety scenarios that—when a within-Guidelines
sentence is imposed—necessitate less extensive explanation
“because guidelines sentences themselves are in many ways
tailored to the individual and reflect approximately two decades
of close attention to federal sentencing policy.” United
States v. Johnson, 587 F.3d 625, 639 (4th Cir. 2009), cert.
denied, Martin v. United States, 130 S. Ct. 2128 (2010),
(internal quotation marks omitted).
The district court’s explanation here was not the sort
of generic, universally-applicable recitation we found
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insufficient in United States v. Carter, 564 F.3d 325, 329 (4th
Cir. 2009). It was offense-specific, made mention of the
defendant’s personal background, and specifically dealt with his
criminal history. A district court is not required to
“robotically tick through § 3553(a)’s every subsection,” United
States v. Johnson, 445 F.3d 339, 345 (4th Cir. 2006), nor must
it explicitly state its rationale for the rejection of every
unsuccessful argument brought before it. See Rita, 551 U.S. at
356 (“Sometimes a judicial opinion responds to every argument;
sometimes it does not . . . . The law leaves much, in this
respect, to the judge’s own professional judgment.”). The
downward departure granted by the district court at sentencing
essentially mooted, or at the least substantially lessened,
Fuentes-Ramirez’s double-counting argument and the argument went
unmentioned at the sentencing hearing. The district court’s
silence on this contention does not render the sentence
unreasonable.
We therefore affirm the district court’s judgment. We
dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal
contentions are adequately presented in the materials before the
court and argument would not aid in the decisional process.
AFFIRMED
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