United States v. Shawn Rodrigues ( 2023 )

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS MAR 1 2023
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, No. 21-10312
Plaintiff-Appellee, D.C. No.
1:16-cr-00529-DKW
v.
SHAWN RODRIGUES, MEMORANDUM*
Defendant-Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Hawaii
Derrick Kahala Watson, Chief District Judge, Presiding
Submitted February 17, 2023**
Honolulu, Hawaii
Before: BEA, COLLINS, and LEE, Circuit Judges.
Appellant Shawn Rodrigues appeals the district court’s denial of his second
motion for compassionate release. The parties are familiar with the facts and
procedural history, so we do not recite them here. We review for abuse of discretion,
United States v. Keller, 2 F.4th 1278, 1281 (9th Cir. 2021) (per curiam), and we
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
**
The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision
without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).
affirm.
Consistent with what we later held in United States v. Chen, 48 F.4th 1092(9th Cir. 2022), the district court here assumed that non-retroactive sentencing
changes could constitute, in an appropriate case, an “extraordinary and compelling
reason[]” justifying relief under § 3582(c)(1)(A). Specifically, the court recognized
that, if Rodrigues were sentenced today, he would now be eligible—under the new
2018 sentencing provisions that are not retroactive—for a sentence of imprisonment
below the previously applicable statutory mandatory minimum. But, again
consistent with Chen, the district court concluded that this consideration did not give
rise, in the circumstances of Rodrigues’s case, to an extraordinary and compelling
reason warranting a lower sentence. See Chen, 48 F.4th at 1100 (holding that, to
warrant relief under § 3582(c)(1)(A), “the petitioning defendant still must
demonstrate that [the relevant] non-retroactive changes rise to the level of
‘extraordinary and compelling’ in his individualized circumstances”).
In the district court’s view, to grant such relief to Rodrigues would result in a
sentencing disparity with other similar pre-2018 defendants. Further, there were no
“aggravating circumstances” about the length of Rodrigues’s sentence that made it
“extraordinarily unjust” to leave it in place. This case-specific judgment applied the
correct legal standards and reached a reasonable conclusion in light of the record in
this case. The district court therefore did not abuse its discretion in concluding that
2
Rodrigues had failed to carry his burden to show that a sentencing reduction under
§ 3582(c)(1)(A) was warranted.
AFFIRMED
3