United States Court of Appeals

For the First Circuit

No. 21-1141

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Appellee,

v.

JORGE MARCELO CANALES-RAMOS,

Defendant, Appellant.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO

[Hon. Francisco A. Besosa, U.S. District Judge]

Before

Lynch and Selya, Circuit Judges,

and McCafferty,* District Judge.

Hector Sueiro-Alvarez, with whom Eric Alexander Vos, Federal 

Public Defender, Franco L. Pérez-Redondo, Assistant Federal Public 

Defender, Supervisor, Appeals Division, and Kevin E. Lerman, 

Research and Writing Specialist, 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 on brief, for appellee. 

* Of the District of New Hampshire, sitting by designation. 
December 9, 2021
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SELYA, Circuit Judge. Defendant-appellant Jorge Marcelo 

Canales-Ramos seeks compassionate release based on what he alleges 

to be "extraordinary and compelling" reasons pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 

§ 3582(c)(1)(A), as amended by the First Step Act, Pub. L. No. 

115-391, § 603(b), 132 Stat. 5194, 5239 (2018). The defendant 

contends that the district court abused its discretion when it 

denied his motion for such relief. After careful consideration, 

we affirm.

I

We briefly rehearse the relevant facts and travel of the 

case. In September of 2011, the defendant was arrested aboard a 

vessel — in waters off the coast of the U.S. Virgin Islands — and 

found to be in possession of 48.2 kilograms of cocaine. At the 

time, the defendant was serving a five-year term of supervised 

release imposed after his guilty plea to drug-related charges in 

the District of Puerto Rico (D.P.R.). 

In the wake of the defendant's 2011 arrest, the D.P.R. 

court convened a revocation hearing. The defendant admitted that 

he had violated the conditions of his supervised release by leaving

Puerto Rico without permission and by engaging in renewed criminal 

activity. On February 22, 2012, the district court imposed a 

thirty-month revocation sentence and ordered that sentence "to be

served consecutively to any other term of imprisonment currently 

being served or to be imposed upon" the defendant. 
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By the time the revocation sentence was imposed, the 

defendant had pleaded guilty in the District of the Virgin Islands 

(D.V.I.) to drug-conspiracy and drug-possession charges. See 21 

U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 846. Even so, the D.V.I. court did not 

convene the disposition hearing until May 9, 2012. At that 

hearing, the D.V.I. court imposed a 168-month term of immurement 

on each of the two counts of conviction and ordered those sentences 

to run concurrently. These concurrent terms of immurement were 

later reduced to 135 months pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2) and

Guideline Amendment 782, USSG App. C Supp., amend. 782.

Neither the D.V.I. sentence nor the D.V.I. judgment 

mentioned the D.P.R. revocation sentence. Administrative records 

show that, as of last October, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) 

calculated a total aggregate incarcerative term — encompassing 

both the D.V.I. and D.P.R. sentences — of 165 months. That 

calculation reflected that the D.V.I. and D.P.R. sentences were 

run consecutively.

After unsuccessfully pursuing an administrative 

grievance with the BOP, the defendant filed a pro se motion in the

D.P.R. case. That motion (filed in November of 2019) sought the 

appointment of counsel to bring a post-conviction challenge 

concerning the consecutive nature of his revocation sentence. The 

defendant predicated this initiative on our decision in United 

States v. Almonte-Reyes, 814 F.3d 24 (1st Cir. 2016) — a decision 
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that we discuss below. See infra Part III(B). Following the 

appointment of counsel, the defendant filed the instant motion for 

compassionate release, alleging extraordinary and compelling 

reasons, in November of 2020. See 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i). 

This was not his first such motion: he had filed a similar motion 

in the D.V.I. case a few months earlier.

In both his D.V.I. and D.P.R. compassionate-release

motions, the defendant alleged, among other things, that his preexisting medical infirmities, along with the conditions of his

confinement, posed a substantial risk of severe illness should he 

contract the COVID-19 virus. This risk, he alleged, constituted 

an "extraordinary and compelling" reason for a sentence reduction. 

Id. § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i). In particular, the defendant pointed to 

his hypertension, hyperlipidemia, liver disease, diabetes, and 

pancreatitis, together with the potentially elevated risk of 

illness from COVID-19 posed by his race (Black) and his ethnicity

(Latino). His D.P.R. motion — but not his D.V.I. motion — recast 

the alleged Almonte-Reyes error as a further reason warranting 

compassionate release.

While these motions were pending, the defendant 

contracted COVID-19 in January of 2021. He advised the D.P.R. 

court of this fact, and the court extended the government's 

deadline to file a sur-reply. The government filed a sur-reply 

about a week later. On the same day, the D.P.R. court denied the 
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defendant's compassionate-release motion. In its order, the court 

noted that it had reviewed certain pertinent materials, including 

the parties' briefs and the defendant's medical records. It 

concluded in relevant part that the defendant "ha[d] not identified 

any extraordinary or compelling reason for reduction of his 

sentence." It also reiterated that no error had been committed in 

the imposition of the defendant's "sentences to run concurrently 

but consecutively to his sentence on revocation."

This timely appeal ensued. The defendant's counterpart 

D.V.I. motion for compassionate release remains pending.

II

Our review of a district court's denial of a sentencereduction motion pursuant to section 3582(c)(1)(A) is for abuse of 

discretion. See United States v. Saccoccia, 10 F.4th 1, 4-5 (1st 

Cir. 2021). This is a respectful standard under which we assess 

factual determinations for clear error, evaluate claims of legal 

error de novo, and afford judgment calls a measure of deference. 

See id. 

At the outset, the defendant draws our attention to a 

growing consensus among the courts of appeals. This consensus 

holds that even though the compassionate-release statute requires 

a district court to ensure that any sentence reduction is 

"consistent" with "applicable" policy statements issued by the 

Sentencing Commission, 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A), the current 
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policy statement is not "applicable" to prisoner-initiated motions

for compassionate release (as contrasted with motions brought by 

the BOP). See Saccoccia, 10 F.4th at 7-8 (collecting cases). We

previously have explained the circumstances giving rise to the

doubts about whether the current policy statement is "applicable" 

to prisoner-initiated motions, see id., and it would serve no 

useful purpose to repastinate that ground. As we explain below, 

the issue is not one that we must decide today. 

On the "policy statement" front, the defendant's 

argument rests on unbridled speculation that the district court

regarded the current policy statement as applicable and 

constrained its analysis accordingly. But the district court made 

it sufficiently clear that — regardless of whether the Sentencing 

Commission's current policy statement was applicable — the 

defendant had failed to demonstrate an extraordinary and 

compelling reason. 

We need not tarry. The court below plainly concluded —

without any reference to the policy statement — that the defendant 

"ha[d] not identified any extraordinary or compelling reason for 

reduction of his sentence." This explicit statement shows with 

conspicuous clarity that the court considered and rejected all of 

the defendant's proffered reasons. Nothing in the court's order 

suggests that this blanket rejection was either based on or 

constrained by the current policy statement.
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To be sure, the parties advanced below differing views

as to whether the current policy statement has any bearing upon

prisoner-initiated compassionate-release motions. The defendant 

argued that the current policy statement should be disregarded, 

and the government countered that it should be seen as a 

constraint. Viewed against this backdrop, the most sensible 

understanding of the district court's decision not to address this

dispute is that it did not regard the dispute as outcomedeterminative. Such an understanding is buttressed by what the 

district court said in its order. After determining that no 

extraordinary and compelling reasons had been identified, the 

district court acknowledged that "even if an inmate's health [were] 

at risk (which is not the case here), or even if the inmate me[t] 

one or more of the parameters" in the policy statement, 

compassionate release may be denied. Had the district court

treated the policy statement's categories of extraordinary and 

compelling reasons as binding, it would have referred only to those 

categories. Here, however, the district court identified an 

alternative to those categories (extraordinary and compelling 

reasons based on other health risks). The necessary implication 

is that the court's analysis was not constrained by the policy 

statement.

The defendant's most loudly bruited counter-argument is 

that we can infer that the district court thought itself 
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constrained by the current policy statement because some of the 

order's reasoning parallels points made in the government's 

briefing. This is a bridge too far and, in any event, the

defendant's observation cuts the other way: despite buying into

several of the government's arguments, the district court felt 

free to bypass the "policy statement" contretemps.1 The most 

cogent explanation for that bypass is that the issue did not 

matter.

The defendant argues, in the alternative, that the 

district court's order is ambiguous as to whether it considered 

the current policy statement binding. He also argues more broadly 

— relying on the Supreme Court's seminal sentencing decisions in 

Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 51 (2007), and Rita v. United 

States, 551 U.S. 338, 356 (2007) — that the district court failed 

adequately to explain its reasons for denying relief. Assuming, 

without deciding, that those standards apply on review of a denial 

of a compassionate-release motion, the district court's 

explanation passes muster. The order is admittedly brief, but in 

1 The defendant also tries to bootstrap his argument based on 

the district court's generalized reference to cases relied on by 

the government. But the defendant identifies only one case that 

adhered to the policy statement criteria, see United States v. 

Horton, No. 13-16, 2020 WL 4473405, at *3-4 (M.D. Pa. Aug. 4, 

2020), and the district court did not mention that case. By 

contrast, the case cited by the district court eschewed any 

resolution of the "policy statement" issue. See United States v. 

Gianelli, 513 F. Supp. 3d 199, 200-01 (D. Mass. 2021).
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sentencing matters, "brevity is not to be confused with 

inattention." United States v. Dávila-González, 595 F.3d 42, 48 

(1st Cir. 2010) (quotations omitted). Rather, the key 

consideration is whether the appellate court can discern that the 

lower court had "a reasoned basis" for its decision. Rita, 551 

U.S. at 356; see Dávila-González, 595 F.3d at 48. As explained 

above, we can deduce from the order — despite its brevity — that 

the district court concluded that whether the policy statement was 

binding made no difference to its determination that the 

defendant's asserted reasons were not enough to justify 

compassionate release. 

The defendant's broader remonstrance fares no better. 

He claims that the district court merely adopted the arguments 

from the government's briefing but turned a blind eye to the 

defendant's arguments regarding his specific medical conditions. 

At bottom, though, this is not a complaint that the decision 

reflects inadequate reasoning but, rather, a complaint that the 

district court's completely adequate reasoning did not mirror the 

defendant's views. And — as is evident by our ensuing analysis —

the district court's choice not to embrace the defendant's 

medical-related arguments was a reasoned one. Consequently, we 

proceed to the defendant's remaining claims of error.
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III

This brings us to the meat of the appeal: the district 

court's conclusion that the defendant's proffered reasons were 

insufficient to warrant compassionate release. The pivotal

question is whether the district court abused its discretion in 

holding that the particular circumstances identified by the 

defendant failed to justify compassionate release.

Compassionate release under section 3582(c)(1)(A)(i) 

demands that there must be a reason or set of reasons for 

compassionate release that is both "extraordinary and compelling." 

18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i). Congress — apart from stating that 

rehabilitation alone "shall not be considered an extraordinary and 

compelling reason" for compassionate release — did not elucidate 

this standard. 28 U.S.C. § 994(t). Assuming, as we do, that a 

court adjudicating a prisoner-initiated motion for compassionate 

release may venture beyond the confines of the Sentencing 

Commission's current policy guidance, the "extraordinary and 

compelling" standard is logically guided by the plain meaning of 

those terms.

The plain meaning of "extraordinary" suggests that a

qualifying reason must be a reason that is beyond the mine-run 

either in fact or in degree. See Webster's Third New International 

Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged 807 (1981) (defining 

"extraordinary" as "going beyond what is usual, regular, common, 
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or customary"); see also United States v. Hunter, 12 F.4th 555, 

562 (6th Cir. 2021) (suggesting that such reason must be "most 

unusual," "far from common," or "hav[e] little or no precedent"). 

By the same token, the plain meaning of "compelling" suggests that 

a qualifying reason must be a reason that is both powerful and 

convincing. See Webster's Third, supra at 462 (defining 

"compelling" as "forcing, impelling, [or] driving [circumstance]" 

and as "tending to convince or convert by or as if by forcefulness 

of evidence"); see also Hunter, 12 F.4th at 562. Benchmarked 

against those definitions, the district court acted within the 

ambit of its discretion in concluding that the defendant's 

proffered reasons for compassionate release fell short. 

A

To begin, we consider the defendant's proffered medical 

reasons and risk of illness from COVID-19. The district court did 

not say whether or not the defendant's proffered medical reasons

exhibited an exceptional medical need. Rather, the court made a 

factual determination that although the defendant had pre-existing 

medical infirmities and eventually contracted COVID-19, he was 

"being closely monitored" and his health was in "stable" condition. 

The defendant does not make any concerted effort to 

challenge those findings. Nor would such an effort be fruitful: 

the defendant's medical records unequivocally show that after 

contracting COVID-19, he remained "[a]symptomatic," that BOP 
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medical staff confirmed that he exhibited no untoward symptoms, 

and that his oxygen levels and temperature were well within normal

ranges.

The defendant urges us not to take the medical records 

at face value. Despite what they show, he strives to persuade us 

that the possibility of severe illness from COVID-19 — considering 

factors like his comorbidities and the conditions of his 

confinement — remain extraordinary and compelling reasons for 

compassionate release.2 We are not persuaded.

The district court made a reasonable risk assessment and 

determined that the current state of the defendant's health and 

the care that he was receiving weighed against a finding that an 

extraordinary and compelling reason existed for compassionate 

release. This amounted to a judgment call — a judgment call that 

falls within the wide compass of the district court's discretion. 

As we have said, "not every complex of health concerns is 

sufficient to warrant compassionate release . . . even in the 

midst of the COVID-19 pandemic." Saccoccia, 10 F.4th at 5. 

Consequently, we leave intact the district court's reasonable 

determination that the defendant failed to proffer an 

2 We note that the defendant — who declined the vaccine shortly 

after the district court's denial of his compassionate-release 

motion — has since been fully vaccinated.
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extraordinary and compelling medical reason for compassionate 

release.

B

We turn next to the defendant's claim that a putative 

sentencing error should tip the balance toward finding an 

extraordinary and compelling reason for compassionate release. 

This claim of error has its genesis in United States v. AlmonteReyes, which was decided several years after the defendant's 

revocation sentence was imposed. There, we interpreted 18 U.S.C. 

§ 3584(a) and determined that a federal sentencing court lacks the 

authority to direct that a sentence run consecutively to a federal 

sentence yet to be imposed. See 814 F.3d at 28. 

The defendant posits that if the D.P.R. court had the 

benefit of Almonte-Reyes, it would not have run (and could not 

lawfully have run) the revocation sentence consecutive to the notyet-imposed D.V.I. sentence. Building on this foundation, the 

defendant further posits that if the D.V.I. court had been writing 

on a clean slate — unconstrained by the D.P.R. court's declaration 

that the revocation sentence was to run consecutively — it would 

have imposed its sentence to run concurrently with the D.P.R. 

sentence. In that event, the defendant asserts, he already would 

have served both sentences in full.

It was comfortably within the district court's 

discretion to conclude that the putative sentencing error was 
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insufficient to warrant compassionate release. Though perhaps 

extraordinary, that putative sentencing error did not — in the 

circumstances of this case — afford a compelling reason to reduce 

the defendant's sentence.3

A close look at the defendant's situation leaves no doubt 

that his proffered reason cannot be classified as "compelling." 

He has provided no evidence of any disparity between his aggregate 

sentence and the aggregate sentence that would have resulted had

both sentences been imposed after Almonte-Reyes. He does no more 

than suggest that had his revocation sentence not been imposed in 

contravention of the rule later announced in Almonte-Reyes, he 

"may" have been eligible for release at an earlier date. 

The defendant's suggestion is woven entirely from 

gossamer strands of speculation and surmise. He gave the court 

below no basis for concluding that, had the D.P.R. court not run 

the revocation sentence consecutive to the not-yet-imposed D.V.I. 

3 Although the district court reasonably rejected the claim 

that the putative sentencing error constituted an extraordinary 

and compelling reason for compassionate release, the defendant 

seizes on the district court's statement addressing the 

consecutive nature of the sentence to suggest that the district 

court committed legal error. This is too much of a stretch: the 

statement seems to describe the D.V.I. court's judgment (as the 

defendant concedes), and the district court's awkward phrasing is 

best understood as an attempt to explain that any Almonte-Reyes

error was harmless. Given that the parties' briefs in the court 

below were crystal clear on this point, we think that — contrary 

to the defendant's importunings — this imprecision affords 

insufficient reason to believe that the district court 

misunderstood the parties' arguments.
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sentence, the D.V.I. court would have proceeded to impose a fully 

concurrent sentence. The D.V.I. judgment did not mention the 

revocation sentence, and the default rule is that those sentences 

would run consecutively. See 18 U.S.C. § 3584(a) ("Multiple terms 

of imprisonment imposed at different times run consecutively 

unless the court orders that the terms are to run concurrently."). 

Apart from the D.V.I. court's silence on the subject, it also

should be noted that the D.V.I. court imposed a downwardly variant 

sentence (more than sixty months below the bottom of the guideline 

range). Given this largesse, there is nothing to support the 

defendant's conjecture that the D.V.I. court — were it free to do 

so — would have opted to run the two sentences concurrently. In 

short, the defendant offered nothing that might have persuaded the 

district court (or this court, for that matter) that the putative

Almonte-Reyes error lengthened his aggregate sentence at all.

So, too, the defendant failed to present any

idiosyncratic circumstances sufficient to buttress his claim. The 

district court's appraisal of the sentencing factors suggests that 

it believed the sentence to be appropriate, given the nature of 

the offense and the history and characteristics of the offender. 

Even though the defendant offered evidence of his claimed

rehabilitation, the district court — after it marshalled various 
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sentencing considerations militating against compassionate release 

— was unconvinced.4 

The defendant counters that the putative Almonte-Reyes

error is both extraordinary and compelling, asserting that it was 

a non-retroactive decision that could not have been the basis for 

any timely post-conviction challenge. In mounting this assertion, 

he draws on a handful of decisions in which courts have 

acknowledged that claims involving non-retroactive changes in law 

affecting sentencing exposure may constitute an extraordinary and 

compelling reason sufficient to justify compassionate release. 

See, e.g., United States v. Maumau, 993 F.3d 821, 837 (10th Cir. 

2021); United States v. McGee, 992 F.3d 1035, 1047-48 (10th Cir. 

2021); United States v. McCoy, 981 F.3d 271, 285-87 (4th Cir. 

2020). Even if we accept, for argument's sake, the logic of the 

decisions that he embraces, those cases do not go so far as to 

hold that such a change in the law, without more, may comprise an 

extraordinary and compelling reason sufficient to warrant 

compassionate release. Rather, they suggest that the changed legal 

4 Because the district court reasonably concluded that the 

defendant failed to demonstrate an extraordinary and compelling 

reason for compassionate release, we need not address in detail 

its review of the universe of sentencing factors. We note, 

however, that a district court's supportable determination that 

the section 3553(a) factors weigh against the granting of 

compassionate release constitutes an independently sufficient 

basis to uphold a denial of such relief. See Saccoccia, 10 F.4th 

at 4.
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landscape must be considered in view of a defendant's particular 

circumstances. See, e.g., Maumau, 993 F.3d at 838 (Tymkovich, J., 

concurring) ("[A] district court may consider the legislative 

change to the stacking provision only in the context of an 

individualized review of a movant's circumstances."); McGee, 992 

F.3d at 1048 (reasoning that the First Step Act's non-retroactive 

amendments might rise to the level of "extraordinary and compelling 

reasons" when considered in combination with "a defendant's unique

circumstances"); McCoy, 981 F.3d at 285-87 (holding that the First 

Step Act's changes to section 924(c), in combination with the 

resulting "disparity," may amount to "extraordinary and 

compelling" reasons). As we previously have stated, the 

circumstances the defendant presented were insufficient to make 

his claim compelling.

That ends this aspect of the matter. We hold that the 

district court did not abuse its discretion in rejecting the 

defendant's plea that the putative Almonte-Reyes error warranted 

a reduction of his sentence. 

IV

We need go no further. The short of it is that our 

examination of the record reveals that the court below did not 

trespass — or even closely approach — the margins of its broad 

discretion in denying the defendant's compassionate-release 
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motion. For the reasons elucidated above, the judgment of the 

district court is 

Affirmed.