NOT FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

 v. 

RICHARD MAX TAFOYA, 

Defendant-Appellant.

No. 20-50240 

D.C. No. 

3:19-cr-05163-LAB-1 

MEMORANDUM*

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of California

Larry A. Burns, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted August 3, 2021

Pasadena, California

Before: PAEZ, CALLAHAN, and BENNETT, Circuit Judges.

Richard Tafoya appeals a supervised-release condition prohibiting him from 

entering Mexico for five years. He also challenges the substantive reasonableness 

of his eighty-month sentence for importing methamphetamine into the United 

States. Having jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm.

Because Tafoya failed to object to the supervised-release condition at 

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent 

except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.

FILED

AUG 18 2021

MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK

U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
2 

sentencing, we review the matter for plain error. See United States v. Wolf Child, 

699 F.3d 1082, 1089, 1094–95 (9th Cir. 2012). And contrary to Tafoya’s 

contention, the district court did not plainly err in failing to support, with record 

evidence, the travel restriction. Courts must comply with this “enhanced 

procedural requirement[]” when a supervised-release condition implicates a 

particularly significant liberty interest. Id. at 1090 (quoting United States v. 

Weber, 451 F.3d 552, 568 (9th Cir. 2006)). Our case law, however, has not 

established that the right to travel abroad constitutes such an interest for sentencing 

purposes. Our case law also fails to support Tafoya’s argument that his 

relationship with his girlfriend in Mexico “is a relationship that implicates a 

particularly significant liberty interest in intimate association.” See id. at 1095. It 

would not, therefore, have been clear or obvious to the court that this case 

constituted one of the “rare” ones requiring “additional procedures and . . . special 

findings.” United States v. Rudd, 662 F.3d 1257, 1263 n.4 (9th Cir. 2011) (citation 

omitted). 

Nor is the travel restriction plainly overbroad for not allowing Tafoya to 

enter Mexico with his probation officer’s permission. While such exceptions can 

“help[] to mitigate the severity of [a] limitation,” United States v. Watson, 582 F.3d 

974, 984 (9th Cir. 2009), Tafoya points to no case holding that blanket restrictions 

on travel are impermissible. Given Tafoya’s smuggling history, criminal 
3 

connections in Mexico, and lack of family ties to that country, the court could have 

reasonably concluded that an absolute prohibition was justified.1 Cf. United States 

v. LaCoste, 821 F.3d 1187, 1193 (9th Cir. 2016) (“There are of course situations in 

which a defendant’s ties to [a particular area] may not be a positive influence, and 

in such cases a condition of supervised release barring the defendant’s return may 

well be justified.”). 

Finally, we affirm Tafoya’s custodial sentence. The district court carefully 

considered the statutory sentencing factors, see 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), and explained 

why it was imposing a sentence twenty months below the guidelines 

recommendation. The court noted Tafoya’s age and health, on the one hand, and 

his extensive criminal history and the need for deterrence, on the other. Tafoya

disagrees with the court’s reasoning, but he fails to establish that his sentence was 

“shockingly high . . . or otherwise unsupportable as a matter of law.” United States 

v. Ressam, 679 F.3d 1069, 1088 (9th Cir. 2012) (en banc) (citation omitted). 

AFFIRMED.

1 Whereas the court’s oral pronouncement prohibited Tafoya from entering 

Mexico, its written order allowed him to do so with his probation officer’s 

permission. The oral pronouncement controls, see United States v. Hernandez, 795 

F.3d 1159, 1169 (9th Cir. 2015), but Tafoya may request clarification from the 

court as to which condition was intended.