United States Court of Appeals

For the First Circuit

No. 20-1029

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Appellee,

v.

JEAN C. TORRES-MELÉNDEZ,

Defendant, Appellant.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO

[Hon. Aida M. Delgado-Colón, U.S. District Judge]

Before

Thompson, Kayatta, and Barron,

Circuit Judges.

Alejandra Bird López, Research and Writing Specialist, with 

whom Eric Alexander Vos, Federal Public Defender, and Franco L. 

Pérez-Redondo, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Supervisor, 

Appeals Division, 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 brief, for appellee.

March 21, 2022
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THOMPSON, Circuit Judge. One winter day in 2018, Puerto 

Rico police officers went to a public housing project looking for 

a car involved in a murder. They wore plain clothes but had their 

guns and police IDs visible. Spotting a group of people hanging 

around outside, the officers approached and identified themselves. 

A man who turned out to be Jean Torres-Meléndez grabbed something 

from his waistband and took off. Ducking into an apartment 

building, Torres (as we will call him, per Spanish naming customs) 

tossed a machine gun — a modified Glock pistol — from a stairwell 

balcony and gave himself up. Officers later found the gun, which 

had 1 bullet in the chamber and an attached magazine with 14 

bullets. They also took from him a couple of magazine clips, each 

holding 19 bullets. 

After some preliminaries (not relevant here), Torres 

pled guilty without a plea deal to illegally possessing a machine 

gun.1 See 18 U.S.C. § 922(o)(1). That crime carries a top prison 

term of ten years. See id. § 924(a)(2). At sentencing, the 

district judge set Torres's base offense level at 20, see USSG 

§ 2k2.1(a)(4)(B), and subtracted 3 levels for acceptance of 

1 This is as good a place as any to say that the background 

facts come from the uncontested parts of the probation office's 

presentence investigation report ("PSI," for short) and from the 

transcripts of the key court hearings. See, e.g., United States

v. Ilarraza, 963 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir. 2020). 
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responsibility, see id. § 3E1.1(a), (b), which generated a total 

offense level of 17. Cross-referencing that level with Torres's 

criminal history category I yielded an advisory prison range of 24 

to 30 months. 

Torres sought a term of 24 months. The government sought 

30 months. Pointing to Torres's "juvenile adjudications" for 

domestic violence and aggravated burglary and his two adult arrests 

on weapons and narcotics charges, the judge stated that "[t]he 

record reflects" his "violent tendencies" — to which Torres's 

lawyer objected. The judge agreed that she "should have better 

characterized that," but then did nothing to clarify the violenttendencies remark. And the judge ended up varying the sentence to 

60 months, stressing (with italics ours) that she adjusted the 

advisory term because of 

the type of weapon that was possessed, the 

conditions in which possessed, the lack of 

reasons for a person unemployed, being a drug 

addict, and with the problems he has . . . 

encountered, that has a track record of 

engaging in drug offenses and weapon 

violations, and his prior arrest record 

dismissed at state level on speedy trial 

grounds, and . . . the circumstances that 

Puerto Rico faces due to the problem caused by 

the illegal possession of weapons.

From this sentence Torres appeals, raising a 

multifaceted objection to the procedural and substantive 

reasonableness of the judge's decision. Applying abuse-of-
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discretion review, see United States v. Dávila-Bonilla, 968 F.3d 

1, 9 (1st Cir. 2020), we begin — and find we can end — with his 

procedural-reasonableness claim. And we need only address one of 

his many procedural-reasonableness arguments at that. See United 

States v. Cruz-Ramos, 987 F.3d 27, 39 (1st Cir. 2021) (explaining 

that the "simplest" way to handle a case is often the "best" way);

PDK Labs. Inc. v. DEA, 362 F.3d 786, 799 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (Roberts, 

J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment) (noting 

that "if it is not necessary to decide more, it is necessary not 

to decide more").

As an "[i]ndependent" basis for vacating his sentence, 

Torres — hyping the italicized phrase in the block quote above —

insists that the judge wrongly considered prior arrests not 

resulting in convictions in varying upward (exactly two times the 

top of the guidelines range).2 The government says that this 

aspect of the judge's sentence "explanation" seems

2 Convinced that Torres did not raise this challenge below, 

the government declares that we can review only for plain error. 

But like Torres, we think the defense's objection to the judge's 

violent-tendencies comment adequately preserved the issue. See

United States v. Rivera-Berríos, 968 F.3d 130, 134 (1st Cir. 2020) 

(repeating that "[t]o preserve a claim of procedural sentencing 

error . . . a defendant's objection need not be framed with 

exquisite precision"). So we need not consider any arguments 

premised on plain error. The government also calls Torres's 

arguments here "undeveloped." They are not.
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"problem[atic]." But to us it is problematic — and in a reversible 

error kind of way.

What little we know about the two at-issue arrests comes 

from the PSI. The first was a 2010 arrest on local weapons charges. 

The PSI called the "circumstances" surrounding this arrest 

"[u]nknown" because "the files were destroyed" after the 

commonwealth court dismissed the matter on speedy-trial grounds. 

The second was a 2014 arrest on local drug charges. The PSI said 

the "charging documents" alleged Torres "illegally, maliciously, 

voluntarily and with criminal intent, possessed heroin and 

cocaine." The commonwealth court also dismissed that case for 

lack of a speedy trial. 

We do not doubt that the judge considered Torres's 

(supposed) "track record of engaging in" drug and weapon offenses 

integral to her overall sentencing rationale. We also do not doubt 

that the judge's track-record rationale shows she treated proof of 

arrest as proof of guilt — without highlighting any corroborating 

evidence that the underlying conduct actually occurred. And 

therein lies the flaw. The Federal Reporter, after all, is filled 

with our cases holding that "when an arrest has not ripened into 

a conviction," a sentencer cannot "rely on that arrest in a manner 

that equates the arrest with guilt." See United States v. DíazLugo, 963 F.3d 145, 153 (1st Cir. 2020); accord Dávila-Bonilla, 
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968 F.3d at 9 (citing a number of opinions). This is because 

"proof only of an arrest is no proof of guilt." United States v. 

Marrero-Pérez, 914 F.3d 20, 23 (1st Cir. 2019) (emphasis added). 

Which means that a sentencer cannot "rely on an arrest record as 

evidence of a defendant's conduct" absent "some reliable 

indication that the underlying conduct actually occurred." See

Díaz-Lugo, 963 F.3d at 153; accord United States v. CastilloTorres, 8 F.4th 68, 71-72 (1st Cir. 2021) (listing a string of 

decisions and "find[ing] it unsurprising that many of our 

admonitions against the use of unsupported allegations in mere 

charges contain no hint that they should apply only to some forms 

of sentence enhancement and not others"). 

The judge talked up how each charge got dismissed on a 

speedy-trial technicality. If the judge thought that this somehow 

gave credibility to the arrest allegations, she is mistaken. 

Torres notes — without any contradiction from the government —

that "local speedy-trial dismissals are without prejudice to 

refiling" if prosecutors "deem[] it warranted" and that the record 

reveals nothing "about why local authorities did not prosecute 

[him]." And our opinions mince no words in stating that a judge 

"imposing incarceration for a later crime cannot simply presume 

that past charges resolved without conviction . . . are 

attributable to flawed or lax prosecutorial or judicial systems 
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rather than the defendant's innocence." See United States v. 

Rondón-García, 886 F.3d 14, 26 (1st Cir. 2018) (quoting United 

States v. Cortés-Medina, 819 F.3d 566, 576-77 (1st Cir. 2016) 

(Lipez, J., dissenting)). 

The bottom line is that because the judge gave "weight" 

to arrests not backed "by convictions or independent proof of 

conduct," Torres's sentence cannot stand. See Marrero-Pérez, 914 

F.3d at 22. And the government's arguments to the contrary do not 

hold up, as we now explain.

The government's lead-off claim is that the judge 

"correct[ly]" concluded "that Torres has 'a track record of 

engaging in drug offenses.'" This is so, the government says, 

"because, by his own admission, [Torres] has possessed, consumed, 

and been addicted to marijuana for most of his life." Context is 

the key to understanding language, all can agree. See United 

States v. Saccoccia, 10 F.4th 1, 9 (1st Cir. 2021) (stating that 

"in legal matters, as in life, '[e]verything depends on context'" 

(alteration in original and quoting Rivera-Velásquez v. Hartford 

Steam Boiler Inspection & Ins. Co., 750 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir. 

2014))). And pulling back the lens, we see that while the judge 

noted Torres's "known history of substance abuse," she (among other 

things) keyed in on his "prior arrests for possession of controlled 

substances and weapons violations" as evidence that he had "violent 
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tendencies" (our emphasis) — which showed up in "early-on stages" 

where he "began to deal . . . either drugs or weapons." 

Taking a different tack, the government claims that the 

judge rightly referred to the 2010 weapons arrest to counter 

Torres's mitigating argument that he possessed the Glock only 

because "he was the innocent victim of a shooting" in 2012 (i.e., 

the idea being that he carried the gun only for self-defense). 

And Torres's "2010 arrest," the theory continues, gives reason to 

doubt "his self-serving claim" that he carried the Glock simply 

because of what went down two years later "in 2012." But even 

accepting the government's hypothesis, the arrest is only relevant 

for that purpose if the charge were true. So again, we are left 

with a judge giving "weight" to a bare arrest without sufficiently 

corroborative evidence — which, as we have been at pains to stress, 

is prohibited. See Marrero-Pérez, 914 F.3d at 22.3

The government also makes much of the judge's saying at 

one point (emphasis ours) that "the fact that [Torres] might have 

been involved in 2010, 2014, with weapons and drugs, is there." 

But the government can get no mileage out of "might" — particularly 

since the judge (when push came to shove) specifically called 

3 That the judge reversibly equated arrest with guilt 

undercuts the government's footnoted suggestion that she may have 

properly used the 2010 weapons arrest to "show[] that he knew that 

the law regulated whether he could freely possess them."
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Torres's "track record of engaging in drug offenses and weapons 

violations" a driving force in her sentence selection (emphasis 

supplied). And as if to make this more emphatic, the judge 

(italics added) made sure to say that "if you look at" Torres's 

infractions "that you have, he has been so involved in 2010, 2014." 

Which brings us back to the point that judges cannot "rel[y] on 

arrests as a proxy for criminal culpability or the likelihood of 

recidivism." See id. at 23; accord Dávila-Bonilla, 968 F.3d at 9 

("implor[ing]" judges not to use "mere charges to infer unlawful 

behavior unless there is proof by a preponderance of the evidence 

of the conduct initiating [those] arrests and charges" (alteration 

in original and quotation marks omitted)).

All that is left to say then is that we vacate Torres's 

sentence and remand for resentencing.4

4 The parties can pursue on remand the other issues suggested 

in their briefs that (as noted earlier) we need not explore today 

(assuming those other issues remain relevant).