IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT

No. 16-11595

Summary Calendar

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee

v.

MARIA ISABEL REYNA,

Defendant-Appellant

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Texas

USDC No. 3:16-CR-363-1

Before KING, ELROD, and HIGGINSON, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:*

Maria Isabel Reyna appeals the sentence imposed upon the revocation of 

supervised release. The district court sentenced her above the guidelines 

range to 24 months of imprisonment, which was the statutory maximum. 

Reyna argues that the sentence is substantively unreasonable because the 

district court sentenced her based in part on improper consideration of her 

support of a man in prison. According to Reyna, such a consideration fell 

 

* Pursuant to 5TH CIR. R. 47.5, the court has determined that this opinion should not 

be published and is not precedent except under the limited circumstances set forth in 5TH 

CIR. R. 47.5.4.

United States Court of Appeals

Fifth Circuit

FILED

September 26, 2017

Lyle W. Cayce

Clerk

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outside the applicable sentencing factors under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) and 

constitutes reversible plain error in light of United States v. Chandler, 732 F.3d 

434, 437-40 (5th Cir. 2013).

Plain error review applies to Reyna’s argument because she did not 

object to the substantive reasonableness of her sentence in the district court. 

See United States v. Whitelaw, 580 F.3d 256, 259-60 (5th Cir. 2009). An 

upward variance is substantively unreasonable if it “(1) does not account for a 

factor that should have received significant weight, (2) gives significant weight 

to an irrelevant or improper factor, or (3) represents a clear error of judgment 

in balancing the sentencing factors.” Chandler, 732 F.3d at 437 (internal 

quotation marks and citation omitted). “[A] sentencing error occurs when an 

impermissible consideration is a dominant factor in the court’s revocation 

sentence, but not when it is merely a secondary concern or an additional 

justification for the sentence.” United States v. Rivera, 784 F.3d 1012, 1017 

(5th Cir. 2015).

Reyna has not shown that the district court erred by sentencing her 

based on an improper factor. The court raised Reyna’s ongoing relationship to 

the man as one of the reasons that she failed to comply with her conditions of 

supervised release. Additionally, while the district court made two comments 

about Reyna’s relationship to the man, the district court’s main focus in 

sentencing Reyna was the nature and circumstances of her supervised release 

violations and the fact that she was not deterred by the two-month sentence 

she received for her prior revocation of supervised release.

Unlike Chandler, where an irrelevant and improper factor was the 

district court’s primary reason for imposing an upward variance, the district 

court’s comments here do not show that Reyna’s relationship to the man, if it

was a factor at all in the sentence, was anything more than a secondary concern 

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or additional justification for the upward variance. See Rivera, 784 F.3d at 

1017; United States v. Walker, 742 F.3d 614, 617 (5th Cir. 2014).

In her reply brief, Reyna presents the additional argument that the 

district court’s information about her relationship with the man should not 

have been considered because the defense was not given notice of such 

information before the revocation hearing. We do not consider this argument 

because it is raised for the first time in Reyna’s reply brief. See United States 

v. Jackson, 426 F.3d 301, 304 n.2 (5th Cir. 2005).

AFFIRMED.

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