United States v. Aviles-Santiago

Not for Publication in West's Federal Reporter
United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 12-1591
UNITED STATES,
Appellee,
v.
JORGE AVILÉS-SANTIAGO,
Defendant, Appellant.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. José A. Fusté, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Lynch, Chief Judge,
Torruella and Selya, Circuit Judges.
Raymond L. Sánchez Maceira for appellant.
Alberto R. López Rocafort, Assistant United States Attorney,
with Rosa Emilia Rodríguez-Vélez, United States Attorney, Nelson
Pérez-Sosa, Assistant United States Attorney, Chief, Appellate
Division, and Thomas F. Klumper, Assistant United States Attorney,
on brief for appellee.
March 14, 2014
LYNCH, Chief Judge. After being arrested as part of a
forty-seven defendant drug conspiracy, defendant Jorge Avilés-
Santiago pled guilty to one count of the indictment against him.
His common-law wife and the mother of his two young children,
Kimberly Meléndez-López, was also a defendant in the conspiracy,
and also pled guilty to charges of possessing firearms in
furtherance of the conspiracy. She was sentenced by the same judge
in a proceeding that occurred before Avilés-Santiago's sentencing
hearing.
In this appeal, Avilés-Santiago argues that the district
court committed procedural error when it used a conclusion it had
drawn from Meléndez-López's sentencing to increase his sentence
without giving him previous notice of this issue, and that the
conclusion is not otherwise supported on this record. We agree
with Avilés-Santiago, and so vacate his sentence and remand his
case for resentencing.
I.
Under his plea agreement, Avilés-Santiago pled guilty to
Count One of the indictment, which charged him with conspiring to
possess with intent to distribute one kilogram or more of heroin,
five kilograms or more of cocaine, 280 grams or more of cocaine
base, 100 or more kilograms of marijuana, and quantities of
oxycodone and alprazolam, all within 1,000 feet of a public housing
facility in Corazal, Puerto Rico. See 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a), 846,
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860. The agreement stipulated that Avilés-Santiago was responsible
for between 500 grams and two kilograms of cocaine, resulting in a
minimum sentence of five years and a maximum sentence of eighty
years' imprisonment. The parties agreed to recommend a 70-month
sentence. The court rejected that sentence.
Avilés-Santiago admitted that he joined the conspiracy in
May 2010, acted as a seller, and he possessed and carried firearms
in furtherance of the conspiracy. His Presentence Investigation
Report (PSR), to which neither party objected, shows that he had no
prior criminal history, save for a juvenile offense which resulted
in no criminal history points. Importantly, it contained no
information, or even any hint, that the defendant bore greater
culpability on a theory he had induced his young wife into his
criminal activity.
Meléndez-López's two older half-brothers, along with her
stepfather and her mother, were also members of the drug
conspiracy. Indeed, a photograph, posted on Facebook, showed
Avilés-Santiago and Meléndez-López each holding weapons in the
company of her two older brothers. She had pled guilty and, at age
21, been sentenced a month earlier before the same district judge.
The judge had shown her leniency and sentenced her to probation.
Avilés-Santiago is two years older than Meléndez-López,
and he stated at sentencing that their relationship began when she
was 15. The court reasoned that Avilés-Santiago had "dragged her"
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into the conspiracy, based on what the court had surmised from
sentencing his wife. As said, no such theme appeared in the PSR.
Nor had Avilés-Santiago or his counsel been present at Meléndez-
López's sentencing hearing, nor was a transcript of that hearing
provided to Avilés-Santiago.
When questioned by the court as to whether he had in fact
"dragged" Meléndez-López into the drug conspiracy, Avilés-Santiago
flatly denied the accusation, saying "[t]he truth is that I would
do my own thing, and I never said anything to her. I would do my
thing, and I never said anything about it to her." The court then
asked about the photograph. Avilés-Santiago replied that the
picture was taken at a party and that he had been drinking heavily
at the time and "didn't even realize that that had happened."
The district court also spoke explicitly about Meléndez-
López's sentencing hearing:
THE COURT: You know that I sentenced Kimberly
[Meléndez-López]; am I right?
THE DEFENDANT: Yes.
THE COURT: And I determined when I sentenced
Kimberly that she was a victim in a sense of
your own wrongdoings. Do you understand that?
THE DEFENDANT: Yes.
THE COURT: You dragged her into this, and
you're leaving behind two small kids, [ages]
three and one. And in order -- for the sake
of the kids, for the sake of the kids that are
your kids, you know what I did? I gave her a
probation sentence, exposing myself to a
reversal, because I thought these kids would
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not be without a mother. There was no way
that I could sleep that evening thinking that
those two kids were going to be without a
mother.
THE DEFENDANT: I want to thank you for that
from the bottom of my heart.
Defense counsel interjected that the evidence was that it was
Meléndez-López's two older brothers who gave her the firearms.
Nonetheless, the court, based in part on its conclusion
that Avilés-Santiago had dragged Meléndez-López into the
conspiracy, sentenced Avilés-Santiago to 87 months, well above the
70-month sentence recommended by the parties under the plea
agreement (but nevertheless within the sentencing guidelines
range).
II.
We review criminal sentences under the sentencing
guidelines for abuse of discretion. Gall v. United States, 552
U.S. 38, 51 (2007). Our inquiry proceeds in two steps. First, we
determine whether the district court committed any procedural
error, and then, if we find none, we proceed to review the
substantive reasonableness of the sentence for abuse of discretion.
See United States v. King, 741 F.3d 305, 308 (1st Cir. 2014).
Here, we need not proceed past the first step.
Avilés-Santiago argues that there was procedural error in
that the court relied on conclusions drawn from another sentencing
proceeding at which he was not present, and that he was
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disadvantaged as a result. At no point prior to Avilés-Santiago's
sentencing was he or his counsel informed that his sentence stood
to be sharply increased beyond the recommendation agreed to in the
plea agreement on the basis of a co-defendant's sentencing hearing.
The only piece of evidence referenced by the district
court in the defendant's sentencing was the photograph from
Facebook in which both the defendant and Meléndez-López are holding
guns. Her brothers also appear in the photograph. The photo
itself falls far short of establishing, on its own, that Avilés-
Santiago "dragged" Meléndez-López into anything, to say nothing of
the possibility that Meléndez-López acted of her own choice,
contrary to old gender stereotypes.
We need not test the proposition that it is an acceptable
goal of sentencing to provide disincentive to individuals who
induce the primary caretaker, here the mother, of young children,
into criminal activity. The core problem here was a lack of notice
to the defendant: going into the hearing, neither he nor his
counsel had any forewarning that the proceeding's outcome would
turn on the district judge's already-established belief that
Avilés-Santiago lured Meléndez-López into a pattern of criminal
activity. More notice is required before a defendant can be
sentenced on the basis of a conclusion drawn from some other
proceeding. Cf. United States v. Reynoso, 254 F.3d 467, 469 (3d
Cir. 2001) ("[W]e hold that before a sentencing court may rely on
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testimonial or other evidence from an earlier proceeding, it must
afford fair notice to both defense counsel and the Government that
it plans to do so.").
Given the unusual circumstances of this case, we agree
there was procedural error and it prejudiced the defendant. We do
not know if there is evidence to support the court's belief, but
there is none present in this record, and a sentence based on an
unsupported fact cannot stand. See United States v. González-
Castillo, 562 F.3d 80, 83 (1st Cir. 2009) ("[B]asing a substantial
criminal sentence on a non-existent material fact threatens to
compromise the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of the
proceedings.").
III.
The defendant's sentence is vacated, and the case is
remanded for resentencing. We take no view as to the duration of
the sentence to be imposed on remand.
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