United States v. Roberto Santos-Salazar , 540 F. App'x 653 ( 2013 )

NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FILED
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT SEP 25 2013
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, No. 12-10361
Plaintiff - Appellee, D.C. No. 2:12-cr-00061-GMS-1
v.
MEMORANDUM*
ROBERTO MANUEL SANTOS-
SALAZAR,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Arizona
G. Murray Snow, District Judge, Presiding
Submitted September 10, 2013**
San Francisco, California
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by 9th Cir. R. 36-3.
**
The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision
without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).
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Before: SCHROEDER and BYBEE, Circuit Judges, and TIMLIN, Senior District
Judge.***
Appellant Roberto Manuel Santos-Salazar appeals his conviction by guilty
plea and sentence for illegal reentry of a removed alien in violation of 8 U.S.C. §
1326. On appeal, Santos-Salazar argues (1) that the district court erred by denying
his motions for new counsel when he indicated that he and his attorney had
communication issues, and (2) that the sentence imposed was substantively
unreasonable given the age of a 1996 domestic violence conviction that gave rise
to the sixteen-level enhancement. We affirm.
1. “[A]n unconditional guilty plea . . . ‘constitutes a waiver of the right to
appeal all non-jurisdictional antecedent rulings and cures all antecedent
constitutional defects.’” United States v. Foreman, 329 F.3d 1037, 1038 (9th Cir.
2003), overruled on other grounds by United States v. Jacobo Castillo, 496 F.3d
947, 949 (9th Cir. 2007) (en banc) (quoting United States v. Reyes-Platero, 224
F.3d 1112, 1114 (9th Cir. 2000)); see Tollett v. Henderson, 411 U.S. 258, 267
(1973) (holding a valid guilty plea constitutes a complete waiver of claims of error
occurring prior to plea, including claims arising out of the denial of a motion to
***
The Honorable Robert J. Timlin, Senior District Judge for the U.S.
District Court for the Central District of California, sitting by designation.
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substitute counsel). As the record shows, the court conducted a thorough plea
colloquy before concluding that Santos-Salazar was well-informed of his rights
and competent to enter a plea. Accordingly, Santos-Salazar’s motions for new
counsel were waived by his unconditional guilty plea.
2. A circuit court reviews a district court’s sentence for abuse of discretion.
United States v. Carty, 520 F.3d 984, 993 (9th Cir. 2008) (en banc). Sentences are
reviewed for “reasonableness” and only substantively unreasonable or procedurally
erroneous sentences are reversed. Id.Santos-Salazar contends that his sentence was unreasonable under United
States v. Amezcua-Vasquez, 567 F.3d 1050 (9th Cir. 2009), where we vacated an
enhancement on the grounds that the defendant’s twenty-five year-old conviction
was “stale.” Id. at 1055. Here, the end of Santos-Salazar’s supervision from his
1996 conviction, by contrast, was December 24, 1999—only twelve years before
his arrest for illegal reentry—and the district court gave some credence to the age
of the conviction and lowered by eighteen months the imposed sentence from that
recommended in the Presentence Investigation Report.
Nothing in the record suggests that the sentence was otherwise substantively
or procedurally unreasonable upon review of the totality of the circumstances.
Gall, 552 U.S. at 51. Procedurally, the court did not fail to calculate the sentencing
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guidelines or weigh the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) sentencing factors, and it did not rely
on erroneous facts, or fail to explain its sentence. See Carty, 520 F.3d at 993. To
the contrary, the court weighed the 3553(a) factors carefully and specifically found
that Santos-Salazar “remains a danger to the public” such that it was appropriate to
impose a “significant sentence to deter him from further returning to the United
States.” The judgment of the district court is
AFFIRMED.
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