United States v. Gutierrez-Palma

F I L E D
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
October 13, 2006
UNITED STATES CO URT O F APPEALS Elisabeth A. Shumaker
Clerk of Court
TENTH CIRCUIT
U N ITED STA TES O F A M ER ICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
No. 05-2160
v. (D.C. No. CR -04-2388 JP)
(D . N.M .)
JU A N LU IS G U TIER REZ-PA LM A,
Defendant-Appellant.
OR DER AND JUDGM ENT *
Before HA RTZ, M CCO NNELL, and GORSUCH, Circuit Judges.
Appellant Juan Luis Gutierrez-Palma seeks reversal of his sentence for
illegally reentering the United States after a previous deportation and a prior
aggravated felony conviction. For the reasons outlined below, we affirm.
I.
M r. Gutierrez-Palma has had regular contact with law enforcement since
1993 when he turned 18. M ost pertinently for our purposes, M r. Gutierrez-Palma
*
This Order and Judgment is not binding precedent, except under the
doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. The Court
generally disfavors the citation of orders and judgments, but they may be cited
under the terms and conditions of 10th Cir. R. 36.3.
was convicted of possession with intent to distribute cocaine in Colorado in 1994,
found to be in the United States illegally, and subsequently deported to his home
country of M exico. He returned to this country, again illegally, and continued to
encounter law enforcement, with convictions for driving under the influence of
alcohol and assaulting his wife with a handgun. Eventually, authorities charged
M r. Gutierrez-Palma for his second illegal entry into the United States and, on
February 3, 2005, he pled guilty to this charge. See 8 U.S.C. §§ 1326(a)(1),
(a)(2), and (b)(2).
At sentencing, the District Court calculated that M r. Gutierrez-Palma
qualified for a criminal history category VI and a total offense level of 21 under
the Sentencing G uidelines, including a 16-level enhancement pursuant to U.S.S.G .
§ 2L1.2(b)(1)(A)(i) for a prior drug trafficking felony. The resulting sentence
suggested by the G uidelines: between 57 and 71 months. The D istrict Court
opted to impose a sentence at the bottom end of this range, 57 months, despite
M r. Gutierrez-Palma’s request for a low er sentence still. The D istrict Court
declined M r. Gutierrez-Palma’s request for additional leniency explaining that it
was troubled by, among other things, M r. Gutierrez-Palma’s recent third-degree
assault conviction for threatening his wife with a gun and his repeated contact
with law enforcement.
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II.
M r. Gutierrez-Palma does not dispute the accuracy of the D istrict Court’s
Guidelines calculations but advances three other arguments meriting mention
here: (1) sentences calculated by reference to the Guidelines should not be
presumed to qualify as “reasonable” under the terms of U nited States v. Booker,
543 U.S. 220 (2005); (2) the United States Sentencing Commission’s decision to
recommend a 16-level enhancement for certain prior felony drug trafficking
convictions was arbitrary and too punitive and therefore per se unreasonable
under Booker; and (3) other courts have imposed sub-Guidelines sentences for
similarly situated defendants. W e consider each point in turn.
A.
Following the Supreme Court’s directive in Booker, we assess sentences for
their “reasonableness.” See 543 U.S. at 261, 264. But this enterprise, we have
explained, ought not be entirely rudderless; instead, our review is guided by the
factors set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), which include, among other things, the
nature of the offense and characteristics of the defendant, as well as the need for
the sentence to reflect the seriousness of the crime, to provide adequate
deterrence, to protect the public, and to provide the defendant with needed
training or treatment. United States v. Kristl, 437 F.3d 1050, 1053 (10th Cir.
2006). M r. Gutierrez-Palma suggests that our review under Section 3553(a)
should be conducted without any deference afforded to those sentences falling
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within the Guidelines’s recommended ranges. But, in the months since Booker,
we have already had occasion to consider, and reject, precisely this invitation.
Instead, recognizing that the Guidelines embody the policy guidance of the
Congress and also serve as a bulwark against vastly divergent sentences for
similarly situated defendants, we have held that sentences falling within
applicable Guidelines ranges are to be treated as presumptively reasonable.
Kristl, 437 F.3d at 1054-55.
B.
M r. Gutierrez-Palma next contends that the Sentencing Commission’s
decision in U.S.S.G. § 2L1.2(b)(1)(A)(i) to endorse a 16-level enhancement for
prior certain felony drug-trafficking convictions w as arbitrarily reached and is
unduly harsh; accordingly, M r. Gutierrez-Palma argues, the D istrict Court’s
application of such an enhancement was per se “unreasonable” under Booker.
Again, however, this argument is foreclosed by our post-Booker case law. W e
have explained that the moving party -- here, M r. Gutierrez-Palma -- bears the
burden of rebutting the presumption of reasonableness attaching to a G uidelines-
based sentence. See Kristl, 437 F.3d at 1054-55. W e have further explained that
the moving party must demonstrate the unreasonableness of a Guidelines-based
sentence with specific reference to the factors delineated in Section 3553(a) and
the facts of the case at hand. See United States v. Cage, 451 F.3d 585, 591, 594-
95 (10th Cir. 2006). In his argument that the 16-level enhancement prescribed by
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the G uidelines is per se unreasonable, however, M r. Gutierrez-Palma has
expressed a simple (if strong) policy disagreement with the Sentencing
Commission’s penal choices, seeking to overturn not a single sentence but all
sentences rendered pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 2L1.2(b)(1)(A)(i). Such complaints are
better directed at those entities -- Congress and the Commission -- charged with
making the necessarily difficult decisions about the proper intersection between
penal policy and immigration enforcement, decisions that often involve the
weighing of competing and incommensurable social objectives such as deterring
unlawful immigration by repeat criminal offenders and husbanding the limited
resources of the criminal justice system, to name just two. It is not our role to
substitute our policy views about such matters for those of elected officials or
their designees. Instead, we will look behind a sentence that conforms with the
Guidelines only in cases where the moving party demonstrates that the sentence,
under the particularized facts and circumstances of the case at hand, fails fairly to
account for the nature and circumstances of the defendant’s particular offense, his
or her criminal history, and the other case-specific Section 3553(a) factors
Congress has charged us with applying. 1
1
“W e reject the concept that we, as judges, should determine
‘reasonableness’ under § 3553(a) without reference to the fact that the Guidelines
represent a critical advisory aspect of the § 3553(a) factors . . . . Booker should
not be interpreted to exempt appellate courts from the influence of Congress's
sentiments about reasonableness in sentencing.” Cage, 451 F.3d at 594.
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C.
Finally, M r. Gutierrez-Palma argues that other courts have imposed much
lower, sub-Guidelines sentences for similarly situated defendants and that this
fact should inform the Court’s evaluation of his sentence. W hile this may be an
appropriate case-specific argument for our evaluation under Section 3553(a), M r.
Gutierrez-Palma fails to point us to a truly comparable case suggesting an
inequity in his.
M r. Gutierrez-Palma relies primarily on United States v. Perez-Nunez, 368
F. Supp. 2d 1265 (D. N.M . 2005), where the defendant received a 24-month
sentence for an illegal reentry, rather than, as here, 57 months. W hile there is no
gainsaying that similarities exist between Perez-Nunez and this case, the District
Court’s careful analysis of this case reveals dispositive differences. For example,
M r. Gutierrez-Palma was previously convicted of the felony of possession with
intent to distribute cocaine; before his first deportation, M r. Perez-Nunez was
convicted merely of a misdemeanor -- one involving throwing a rock through the
rear window of a sports-utility vehicle after the driver attempted to run him over
four times. Id. at 1266. Indeed, it was precisely the “relatively benign” nature of
the misdemeanor Perez-Nunez committed that convinced the District Court in his
case to adopt a sub-Guidelines sentence. Id. at 1269. M r. Gutierrez-Palma also
has a recent conviction for assaulting his wife with a gun; we have been pointed
to no similar blemish in M r. Perez-Nunez’s record. The D istrict Court in our case
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noted (and appellant does not dispute) that M r. Gutierrez-Palma has had
continuous contact with law enforcement since the age of 18; again, appellant has
cited no such comparable evidence in Perez-N unez.
***
M r. Gutierrez-Palma complains that “the nature and circumstances of the
offense” -- involving the illegal entry into this country for a second time after the
comm ission of an aggravated felony here -- “are unremarkable in all respects.”
Aplt. Br. at 13. However that may be, M r. Gutierrez-Palma has supplied us w ith
no reason to conclude that the sentence he received was itself anything other than
unremarkable -- consistent with the low-end of the Guidelines and imposed by the
District Court only after a careful review of the pertinent Section 3553(a) factors,
including his individualized criminal history. Accordingly, the judgment of the
District Court is AFFIRM ED.
ENTERED FOR THE COURT
Neil M . Gorsuch
Circuit Judge
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