United States v. Torres-Melendez

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 20-1029
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Appellee,
v.
JEAN C. TORRES-MELÉNDEZ,
Defendant, Appellant.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Aida M. Delgado-Colón, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Thompson, Kayatta, and Barron,
Circuit Judges.
Alejandra Bird López, Research and Writing Specialist, with
whom Eric Alexander Vos, Federal Public Defender, and Franco L.
Pérez-Redondo, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Supervisor,
Appeals Division, were on brief, for appellant.
David C. Bornstein, Assistant United States Attorney, with
whom W. Stephen Muldrow, United States Attorney, and Mariana E.
Bauzá-Almonte, Assistant United States Attorney, Chief, Appellate
Division, were brief, for appellee.
March 21, 2022
THOMPSON, Circuit Judge. One winter day in 2018, Puerto
Rico police officers went to a public housing project looking for
a car involved in a murder. They wore plain clothes but had their
guns and police IDs visible. Spotting a group of people hanging
around outside, the officers approached and identified themselves.
A man who turned out to be Jean Torres-Meléndez grabbed something
from his waistband and took off. Ducking into an apartment
building, Torres (as we will call him, per Spanish naming customs)
tossed a machine gun — a modified Glock pistol — from a stairwell
balcony and gave himself up. Officers later found the gun, which
had 1 bullet in the chamber and an attached magazine with 14
bullets. They also took from him a couple of magazine clips, each
holding 19 bullets.
After some preliminaries (not relevant here), Torres
pled guilty without a plea deal to illegally possessing a machine
gun.1 See 18 U.S.C. § 922(o)(1). That crime carries a top prison
term of ten years. See id. § 924(a)(2). At sentencing, the
district judge set Torres's base offense level at 20, see USSG
§ 2k2.1(a)(4)(B), and subtracted 3 levels for acceptance of
This is as good a place as any to say that the background
1
facts come from the uncontested parts of the probation office's
presentence investigation report ("PSI," for short) and from the
transcripts of the key court hearings. See, e.g., United States
v. Ilarraza, 963 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir. 2020).
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responsibility, see id. § 3E1.1(a), (b), which generated a total
offense level of 17. Cross-referencing that level with Torres's
criminal history category I yielded an advisory prison range of 24
to 30 months.
Torres sought a term of 24 months. The government sought
30 months. Pointing to Torres's "juvenile adjudications" for
domestic violence and aggravated burglary and his two adult arrests
on weapons and narcotics charges, the judge stated that "[t]he
record reflects" his "violent tendencies" — to which Torres's
lawyer objected. The judge agreed that she "should have better
characterized that," but then did nothing to clarify the violent-
tendencies remark. And the judge ended up varying the sentence to
60 months, stressing (with italics ours) that she adjusted the
advisory term because of
the type of weapon that was possessed, the
conditions in which possessed, the lack of
reasons for a person unemployed, being a drug
addict, and with the problems he has . . .
encountered, that has a track record of
engaging in drug offenses and weapon
violations, and his prior arrest record
dismissed at state level on speedy trial
grounds, and . . . the circumstances that
Puerto Rico faces due to the problem caused by
the illegal possession of weapons.
From this sentence Torres appeals, raising a
multifaceted objection to the procedural and substantive
reasonableness of the judge's decision. Applying abuse-of-
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discretion review, see United States v. Dávila-Bonilla, 968 F.3d
1, 9 (1st Cir. 2020), we begin — and find we can end — with his
procedural-reasonableness claim. And we need only address one of
his many procedural-reasonableness arguments at that. See United
States v. Cruz-Ramos, 987 F.3d 27, 39 (1st Cir. 2021) (explaining
that the "simplest" way to handle a case is often the "best" way);
PDK Labs. Inc. v. DEA, 362 F.3d 786, 799 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (Roberts,
J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment) (noting
that "if it is not necessary to decide more, it is necessary not
to decide more").
As an "[i]ndependent" basis for vacating his sentence,
Torres — hyping the italicized phrase in the block quote above —
insists that the judge wrongly considered prior arrests not
resulting in convictions in varying upward (exactly two times the
top of the guidelines range).2 The government says that this
aspect of the judge's sentence "explanation" seems
2 Convinced that Torres did not raise this challenge below,
the government declares that we can review only for plain error.
But like Torres, we think the defense's objection to the judge's
violent-tendencies comment adequately preserved the issue. See
United States v. Rivera-Berríos, 968 F.3d 130, 134 (1st Cir. 2020)
(repeating that "[t]o preserve a claim of procedural sentencing
error . . . a defendant's objection need not be framed with
exquisite precision"). So we need not consider any arguments
premised on plain error. The government also calls Torres's
arguments here "undeveloped." They are not.
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"problem[atic]." But to us it is problematic — and in a reversible
error kind of way.
What little we know about the two at-issue arrests comes
from the PSI. The first was a 2010 arrest on local weapons charges.
The PSI called the "circumstances" surrounding this arrest
"[u]nknown" because "the files were destroyed" after the
commonwealth court dismissed the matter on speedy-trial grounds.
The second was a 2014 arrest on local drug charges. The PSI said
the "charging documents" alleged Torres "illegally, maliciously,
voluntarily and with criminal intent, possessed heroin and
cocaine." The commonwealth court also dismissed that case for
lack of a speedy trial.
We do not doubt that the judge considered Torres's
(supposed) "track record of engaging in" drug and weapon offenses
integral to her overall sentencing rationale. We also do not doubt
that the judge's track-record rationale shows she treated proof of
arrest as proof of guilt — without highlighting any corroborating
evidence that the underlying conduct actually occurred. And
therein lies the flaw. The Federal Reporter, after all, is filled
with our cases holding that "when an arrest has not ripened into
a conviction," a sentencer cannot "rely on that arrest in a manner
that equates the arrest with guilt." See United States v. Díaz-
Lugo, 963 F.3d 145, 153 (1st Cir. 2020); accord Dávila-Bonilla,
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968 F.3d at 9 (citing a number of opinions). This is because
"proof only of an arrest is no proof of guilt." United States v.
Marrero-Pérez, 914 F.3d 20, 23 (1st Cir. 2019) (emphasis added).
Which means that a sentencer cannot "rely on an arrest record as
evidence of a defendant's conduct" absent "some reliable
indication that the underlying conduct actually occurred." See
Díaz-Lugo, 963 F.3d at 153; accord United States v. Castillo-
Torres, 8 F.4th 68, 71-72 (1st Cir. 2021) (listing a string of
decisions and "find[ing] it unsurprising that many of our
admonitions against the use of unsupported allegations in mere
charges contain no hint that they should apply only to some forms
of sentence enhancement and not others").
The judge talked up how each charge got dismissed on a
speedy-trial technicality. If the judge thought that this somehow
gave credibility to the arrest allegations, she is mistaken.
Torres notes — without any contradiction from the government —
that "local speedy-trial dismissals are without prejudice to
refiling" if prosecutors "deem[] it warranted" and that the record
reveals nothing "about why local authorities did not prosecute
[him]." And our opinions mince no words in stating that a judge
"imposing incarceration for a later crime cannot simply presume
that past charges resolved without conviction . . . are
attributable to flawed or lax prosecutorial or judicial systems
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rather than the defendant's innocence." See United States v.
Rondón-García, 886 F.3d 14, 26 (1st Cir. 2018) (quoting United
States v. Cortés-Medina, 819 F.3d 566, 576-77 (1st Cir. 2016)
(Lipez, J., dissenting)).
The bottom line is that because the judge gave "weight"
to arrests not backed "by convictions or independent proof of
conduct," Torres's sentence cannot stand. See Marrero-Pérez, 914
F.3d at 22. And the government's arguments to the contrary do not
hold up, as we now explain.
The government's lead-off claim is that the judge
"correct[ly]" concluded "that Torres has 'a track record of
engaging in drug offenses.'" This is so, the government says,
"because, by his own admission, [Torres] has possessed, consumed,
and been addicted to marijuana for most of his life." Context is
the key to understanding language, all can agree. See United
States v. Saccoccia, 10 F.4th 1, 9 (1st Cir. 2021) (stating that
"in legal matters, as in life, '[e]verything depends on context'"
(alteration in original and quoting Rivera-Velásquez v. Hartford
Steam Boiler Inspection & Ins. Co., 750 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir.
2014))). And pulling back the lens, we see that while the judge
noted Torres's "known history of substance abuse," she (among other
things) keyed in on his "prior arrests for possession of controlled
substances and weapons violations" as evidence that he had "violent
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tendencies" (our emphasis) — which showed up in "early-on stages"
where he "began to deal . . . either drugs or weapons."
Taking a different tack, the government claims that the
judge rightly referred to the 2010 weapons arrest to counter
Torres's mitigating argument that he possessed the Glock only
because "he was the innocent victim of a shooting" in 2012 (i.e.,
the idea being that he carried the gun only for self-defense).
And Torres's "2010 arrest," the theory continues, gives reason to
doubt "his self-serving claim" that he carried the Glock simply
because of what went down two years later "in 2012." But even
accepting the government's hypothesis, the arrest is only relevant
for that purpose if the charge were true. So again, we are left
with a judge giving "weight" to a bare arrest without sufficiently
corroborative evidence — which, as we have been at pains to stress,
is prohibited. See Marrero-Pérez, 914 F.3d at 22.3
The government also makes much of the judge's saying at
one point (emphasis ours) that "the fact that [Torres] might have
been involved in 2010, 2014, with weapons and drugs, is there."
But the government can get no mileage out of "might" — particularly
since the judge (when push came to shove) specifically called
3 That the judge reversibly equated arrest with guilt
undercuts the government's footnoted suggestion that she may have
properly used the 2010 weapons arrest to "show[] that he knew that
the law regulated whether he could freely possess them."
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Torres's "track record of engaging in drug offenses and weapons
violations" a driving force in her sentence selection (emphasis
supplied). And as if to make this more emphatic, the judge
(italics added) made sure to say that "if you look at" Torres's
infractions "that you have, he has been so involved in 2010, 2014."
Which brings us back to the point that judges cannot "rel[y] on
arrests as a proxy for criminal culpability or the likelihood of
recidivism." See id. at 23; accord Dávila-Bonilla, 968 F.3d at 9
("implor[ing]" judges not to use "mere charges to infer unlawful
behavior unless there is proof by a preponderance of the evidence
of the conduct initiating [those] arrests and charges" (alteration
in original and quotation marks omitted)).
All that is left to say then is that we vacate Torres's
sentence and remand for resentencing.4
4 The parties can pursue on remand the other issues suggested
in their briefs that (as noted earlier) we need not explore today
(assuming those other issues remain relevant).
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