United States Court of Appeals 

For the First Circuit 

No. 17-1726 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Appellee, 

v. 

VICTOR M. MANGUAL-ROSADO, 

Defendant, Appellant. 

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO 

[Hon. Carmen Consuelo Cerezo, U.S. District Judge] 

Before 

Torruella, Kayatta, and Barron, 

Circuit Judges. 

 Luis A. Guzmán Dupont on brief for appellant. 

 Rosa Emilia Rodríguez-Vélez, United States Attorney, Mariana 

E. Bauzá-Almonte, Assistant United States Attorney, Chief, 

Appellate Division, and B. Kathryn Debrason, Assistant United 

States Attorney, on brief for appellee. 

October 26, 2018 

 
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BARRON, Circuit Judge. Victor M. Mangual-Rosado 

("Mangual") pleaded guilty to one count of possessing a firearm 

while being an unlawful user of a controlled substance. He now 

appeals his sentence of 30 months' imprisonment on the grounds 

that it was procedurally and substantively unreasonable. For the 

reasons that follow, we affirm. 

I. 

 On November 2, 2016, Mangual was indicted in the District 

of Puerto Rico for possession of a firearm and ammunition by an 

unlawful user of a controlled substance in violation of 18 U.S.C. 

§ 922(g)(3) and § 924(a)(2). Mangual does not dispute that, a 

week earlier, Puerto Rico Police Department officers had found 

Mangual sleeping on the couch at his friend's residence in 

possession of a Bushmaster rifle loaded with a large-capacity 

magazine and 30 rounds of .223 caliber ammunition. Pursuant to a 

plea agreement that Mangual signed on January 10, 2017, he pleaded 

guilty to knowingly and unlawfully possessing a firearm and 

ammunition while being an unlawful drug user and agreed to forfeit 

the rifle and ammunition. Mangual also agreed to a waiver-ofappeal provision. 

II. 

 The government argues that the appeal waiver bars 

Mangual from appealing his sentence because the District Court 

imposed a sentence "within the bottom to middle of the applicable 
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guideline range[,]" and the plea agreement's waiver of appeal 

contemplated a sentence "in accordance with the terms and 

conditions set forth in the Sentence Recommendation provisions of 

this Plea Agreement." To this point, the government notes that 

the Sentence Recommendation provision of the plea agreement stated 

"that [the] defendant may request a sentence of imprisonment at 

the bottom of the applicable Guidelines range and that the 

Government may request a sentence of imprisonment up to the middle 

of the applicable Guidelines range."

 The sentence did fall within the bottom to middle of the 

sentencing guidelines range on which the District Court relied. 

The record shows, however, that the District Court did not use the 

same guidelines range that the parties used in making their 

sentencing recommendations in the plea agreement. Nevertheless, 

Mangual does not argue in his opening brief that the appeal waiver 

does not bar his appeal here. Nor, for that matter, does Mangual's 

argument refer to the appeal waiver at all. In fact, even though 

the government contends in its brief on appeal that the waiver to 

which Mangual agreed does bar his appeal of the sentence, Mangual 

also did not file a reply brief. 

 These failures are quite problematic for Mangual. We 

have made clear that "[w]here . . . the defendant simply ignores 

the waiver and seeks to argue the appeal as if no waiver ever had 

been executed, he forfeits any right to contend either that the 
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waiver should not be enforced or that it does not apply." United 

States v. Miliano, 480 F.3d 605, 608 (1st Cir. 2007). 

 But, we need not rely on the appeal waiver to dispense 

with Mangual's appeal. Even if we do consider the merits of his 

challenges to the sentence, those challenges fail. 

III. 

 We begin with Mangual's four procedural challenges to 

the reasonableness of his sentence. As Mangual concedes that he 

did not raise any of these challenges below, our review is only 

for plain error. United States v. Arsenault, 833 F.3d 24, 28 (1st 

Cir. 2016). And, as Mangual has not shown that the District Court 

committed plain error, or even reversible error at all, none has 

merit. 

 Mangual's first procedural challenge is that the 

District Court relied on clearly erroneous facts in calculating 

his base offense level ("BOL") per section 2K2.1(a)(4)(B) of the 

U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual, which provides for a BOL of 20 

for an offense involving possession of a "semiautomatic firearm 

that is capable of accepting a large capacity magazine" by a 

prohibited person, in this case a drug user. U.S.S.G. § 

2K2.1(a)(4)(B). But, the presentence report ("PSR") contains the 

probation officer's finding that "the firearm in this case was a 

semiautomatic firearm (Bushmaster Rifle, Model Carbon- 15 Pistol, 

Caliber 5.56, Serial Number D04556) that is capable of accepting 
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a large capacity magazine and hence, among the evidence seized in 

this case there is a high capacity magazine (One 5.56x45 PMAG rifle 

magazine with capacity for 30 rounds)." Nor does Mangual point to 

any evidence in the record that would call into question the 

District Court's finding that the rifle he was found to possess 

while being an unlawful drug user was a semiautomatic firearm that 

was capable of receiving a large-capacity magazine. We thus see 

no basis for finding clear error here. United States v. Cox, 851 

F.3d 113, 124 (1st Cir. 2017); see United States v. Cyr, 337 F.3d 

96, 100 (1st Cir. 2003) ("[I]f the defendant's objections to the 

PSR are merely rhetorical and unsupported by countervailing proof, 

the district court is entitled to rely on the facts in the PSR."). 

 Mangual's next procedural challenge concerns the 

District Court's weighing of the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factors. But, 

the District Court expressly stated that it had considered all 

relevant § 3553(a) factors, noting specifically its consideration 

of the "nature of the offense, the parties' plea agreement, the 

type of weapon that was involved and the amount of ammunition[.]" 

See 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(1)-(2). Given that the District Court was 

not required to "dissect every factor . . . 'one by one, in some 

sort of rote incantation, when explicating its sentencing 

decision,'" United States v. Rivera-Clemente, 813 F.3d 43, 51 (1st 

Cir. 2016) (quoting United States v. Turbides–Leonardo, 468 F.3d 

34, 40–41 (1st Cir. 2006)), we cannot say that the District Court 
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failed to give due consideration to the § 3553(a) factors in 

imposing a mid-range sentence. See id. 

 We also reject Mangual's assertion that the District 

Court committed procedural error by not adequately explaining its 

sentencing rationale. The explanation required by § 3553(c) "need 

[not] be precise to the point of pedantry." United States v. 

Dávila–González, 595 F.3d 42, 48 (1st Cir. 2010) (quoting TurbidesLeonardo, 468 F.3d at 40); see United States v. Vargas-García, 794 

F.3d 162, 166 (1st Cir. 2015). And here, before sentencing Mangual 

to a term of imprisonment in the middle of the applicable 

guidelines sentencing range, the District Court described 

Mangual's use of marijuana and Percocet pills, the fact that this 

was his third conviction, and the type of the weapon and amount of 

ammunition involved in the offense. 

 Mangual's final procedural challenge is that the 

District Court reversibly erred by failing to elicit objections to 

the sentence after it was announced. Mangual relies for this 

argument on an Eleventh Circuit case that requires a district 

court, after imposing a sentence, to give the parties an 

opportunity to object to the court's findings of fact and 

conclusions of law. United States v. Jones, 899 F.2d 1097, 1102 

(11th Cir. 1990). However, we have not imposed the requirement 

set forth in Jones. See United States v. Cortés-Medina, 819 F.3d 

566, 574 n.10 (1st Cir. 2016) (Lipez, J., dissenting) (stating 
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that the First Circuit does not, but should, have such a rule); 

see also United States v. Gallant, 306 F.3d 1181, 1189 (1st Cir. 

2002) (noting that the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure are 

silent regarding post-sentencing objections).

 We turn then to Mangual's challenge to the substantive 

reasonableness of the sentence. Mangual asserts that the District 

Court's sentence was substantively unreasonable because the 

District Court imposed too harsh a sentence given that the record 

shows, in his view, that he was merely "in the wrong place at the 

wrong time."1 "But the fact '[t]hat the court chose to attach less 

significance to certain mitigating circumstances than [Mangual] 

thinks they deserved does not make his sentence substantively 

unreasonable.'" United States v. Milán-Rodríguez, 819 F.3d 535, 

540 (1st Cir. 2016) (first alteration in original) (quoting United 

States v. Colón–Rodríguez, 696 F.3d 102, 108 (1st Cir. 2012)). 

Rather, "[a] sentence is substantively reasonable so long as it 

rests on a plausible sentencing rationale and exemplifies a 

defensible result." Id. (quoting United States v. Fernández–

Garay, 788 F.3d 1, 6 (1st Cir. 2015)). And that is the case here, 

given the features of the case that the District Court highlighted: 

Mangual's drug use, his prior convictions, and the type of the 

 1 Mangual does also argue that his sentence was substantively 

unreasonable because of the alleged procedural errors. But, given 

our analysis of the merits of those procedural errors, this 

challenge necessarily fails. 
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weapon and amount of ammunition involved in the offense. Nor does

Mangual identify any mitigating grounds sufficient to persuade us 

that the District Court acted unreasonably in imposing its 

sentence. We thus reject the challenge even if we choose to apply 

the more defendant-friendly abuse-of-discretion standard that 

Mangual asks us to use. 

IV. 

 For the foregoing reasons, the District Court's sentence 

is affirmed.