Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca4-15-04749/USCOURTS-ca4-15-04749-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Jose Adolfo Benitez Alvarado
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

UNPUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 15-4749

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff - Appellee,

v.

JOSE ADOLFO BENITEZ ALVARADO,

Defendant - Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of 

Maryland, at Baltimore. J. Frederick Motz, Senior District 

Judge. (1:13-cr-00696-JFM-1)

Submitted: May 19, 2016 Decided: June 21, 2016

Before THACKER and HARRIS, Circuit Judges, and DAVIS, Senior 

Circuit Judge.

Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.

James Wyda, Federal Public Defender, Meghan Skelton, Greenbelt, 

Maryland, for Appellant. Rod J. Rosenstein, United States 

Attorney, Zachary A. Myers, Assistant United States Attorney, 

Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee.

Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.

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PER CURIAM:

Jose Adolfo Benitez Alvarado (Benitez Alvarado) pled guilty 

to illegal reentry of a removed alien, in violation of 8 U.S.C. 

§ 1326(a), (b)(2) (2012). On appeal, Benitez Alvarado claimed 

that the district court procedurally erred when it sentenced him 

to a three-year term of supervised release without a proper 

explanation. We vacated the term of supervised release and 

remanded for resentencing, expressing no opinion as to the 

propriety of supervised release. United States v. Benitez 

Alvarado, 622 F. App’x 215 (4th Cir. 2015) (No. 14-4784). At 

resentencing, the court imposed the same three-year term of 

supervised release. Benitez Alvarado appeals, arguing that the 

imposition of supervised release is both procedurally and 

substantively unreasonable. We disagree and affirm the district 

court’s amended judgment. 

Under U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual § 5D1.1(c) (2013), 

if supervised release is not required by statute and the 

defendant is an alien facing post-incarceration removal, as is

Benitez Alvarado, a sentencing court “ordinarily should not 

impose a term of supervised release.” If the alien were to 

return illegally, deterrence and the need to protect the public 

are “adequately served by a new prosecution.” § 5D1.1 cmt. n.5. 

“The court should, however, consider imposing a term of 

supervised release on such a defendant if the court determines 

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it would provide an added measure of deterrence and protection 

based on the facts and circumstances of a particular case.” Id. 

The Guidelines “do not foreclose the possibility of supervised 

release being imposed on removable aliens.” United States v. 

Aplicano-Oyuela, 792 F.3d 416, 423 (4th Cir. 2015). If the 

sentencing court “(1) is aware of Guidelines section 5D1.1(c); 

(2) considers a defendant’s specific circumstances and the [18 

U.S.C.] § 3553(a) [(2012)] factors; and (3) determines that 

additional deterrence is needed, nothing more is required.” Id.

at 424 (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted). 

“When reviewing a sentence for substantive reasonableness,

we must ‘take into account the totality of the circumstances, 

including the extent of any variance from the Guidelines range. 

If the sentence is within the Guidelines range, the appellate 

court may, but is not required to, apply a presumption of 

reasonableness.’” Id. at 425 (quoting Gall v. United States, 

552 U.S. 38, 51 (2007)). “A defendant can only rebut the 

presumption by demonstrating that the sentence is unreasonable 

when measured against the § 3553(a) factors.” Id. (internal 

quotation marks omitted). 

Because Benitez Alvarado properly preserved the issue of 

whether the explanation was adequate, we review the imposition 

of supervised release for abuse of discretion. United States v. 

Lynn, 592 F.3d 572, 576 (4th Cir. 2010). Upon our review of the 

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record, we conclude that the district court’s imposition of a 

three-year term of supervised release is both procedurally and 

substantively reasonable and not an abuse of discretion. The 

court was aware of USSG § 5D1.1(c), it considered Benitez 

Alvarado’s specific circumstances and the § 3553(a) factors, and 

it determined that additional deterrence is needed. See

Aplicano-Oyuela, 792 F.3d at 424. 

Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s amended 

judgment. We dispense with oral argument because the facts and 

legal contentions are adequately presented in the materials 

before this court and argument would not aid the decisional 

process.

AFFIRMED

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