Not for Publication in West's Federal Reporter 

United States Court of Appeals

For the First Circuit 

No. 14-1046 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Appellee, 

 v. 

ANTONIO R. MARTÍNEZ-POMALES, 

a/k/a Sealed Defendant 1, a/k/a Benji, 

 Defendant, Appellant. 

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO 

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

Before 

Lynch, Thompson, and Kayatta, 

Circuit Judges. 

 Robert Millán on brief for appellant. 

 Rosa Emilia Rodríguez-Vélez, United States Attorney, Nelson 

Pérez-Sosa, Assistant United States Attorney, Chief, Appellate 

Division, and Juan Carlos Reyes-Ramos, Assistant United States 

Attorney, on brief for appellee. 

August 21, 2015 
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THOMPSON, Circuit Judge. A district court sentenced 

Antonio Martínez-Pomales to 10 years in prison and 5 years of 

supervised release for conspiring to distribute at least 5 

kilograms of cocaine. See 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 846. He got 

somewhat lucky on the supervised-release front, because a statute 

authorizes a minimum supervised-release term of "at least 5 years," 

see id. § 841(b)(1)(A), and permits a maximum term of life, see 

United States v. Cortes-Claudio, 312 F.3d 17, 22-23 (1st Cir. 

2002). Martínez-Pomales later admitted violating conditions of 

his supervised release by (among other things) committing crimes 

of violence. So the court revoked his supervised release, 

sentenced him to 24 months in prison, and imposed a new 5-year 

supervised-release term too. 

Martínez-Pomales contests here only the supervisedrelease part of his new sentence, insisting that the court plainly 

erred by not reducing the 5-year figure to 3.1 

 

1 Plain-error review is compelled, he writes, because he failed to 

object to the sentence below. For any legal novice reading this 

opinion, plain error is an error so clear-cut that a district judge 

should be able to avoid it even without an objection from a party. 

See United States v. Correa-Osorio, 784 F.3d 11, 18 (1st Cir. 

2015). More particularly — and in legalese — plain error is 

"(1) an error, (2) that is clear or obvious, (3) which affects 

[the non-objecting party's] substantial rights (i.e., the error 

made him worse off), and which (4) seriously impugns the fairness, 

integrity, or public reputation of the proceeding." Id. at 17-

18. 
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In so doing, he argues (at least implicitly) in this 

multi-step way: 

Step one: A federal statute, he points out, says that 

after revoking a person's supervised release, a district court can 

impose a prison term followed by more supervised release — though 

the statute adds that the amount of supervised release is limited 

to "the term of supervised release authorized by statute for the 

offense that resulted in the original term of supervised release, 

less any term of imprisonment that was imposed upon revocation of 

supervised release." See 18 U.S.C. § 3583(h). 

Step two: His original drug offense was a Class A 

felony, he concedes. See 18 U.S.C. § 3559; id. § 3581(b). And, 

his argument continues, a supervised-release term for a Class A 

felony may not exceed 5 years. Tellingly, he cites no statute to 

back up his claim, opting instead to rely on section 7B1.1 of the 

federal sentencing guidelines — but this section grades 

supervised-release infractions, not crimes that led to the 

original term of supervised release, and so is not relevant for 

present purposes. See United States v. Tapia-Escalera, 356 F.3d 

181, 185 (1st Cir. 2004) (discussing section 7B1.1's purpose). 

Still, what Martínez-Pomales says is an echo of 18 U.S.C. 

§ 3583(b)(1), which — with a key proviso ("[e]xcept as otherwise 
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provided") — sets a maximum of 5 years' supervised release for a 

Class A felony. 

Step three: Believing that 5 years of supervised release 

was the statutory limit for his original drug crime — and noting 

that the court gave him 2 years in prison following the revocation 

of his first supervised release — he protests that any further 

supervised release could not exceed 3 years after doing the math 

required by section 3583(h) (discussed in step one): 5 - 2 = 3. 

Ergo, the district court plainly blundered by giving him 5 years 

— or so he tries to persuade us. 

We can make short work of this argument, however, because 

a key premise of Martínez-Pomales's thesis is simply wrong: 

contrary to what he thinks, the maximum term of supervised release 

for his drug-conspiracy crime is not 5 years — it is life. Here 

is why. Although section 3583(b)(1) caps supervised release for 

Class A felonies at 5 years, there is an exception if another law 

"otherwise provide[s]." And 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A) is just such 

a law, mandating a minimum term of supervised release "of at least 

5 years" for certain drug crimes, including the one for which 

Martínez-Pomales was originally sentenced. See Cortes-Claudio, 

312 F.3d at 21 (explaining that "[b]ecause § 841 does 'otherwise 

provide' supervised release terms, its provisions" trump section 

3583(b)'s). Also, the "at least 5 years" language means, we have 
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held, that a defendant committing the qualifying crime can face a 

life sentence of supervised release. See id. at 22-23; see also 

United States v. Matos, 328 F.3d 34, 44 (1st Cir. 2003). Given, 

then, that the maximum supervised-release term for MartínezPomales's initial drug crime was life, not 5 years, we cannot say 

that the district court plainly erred by hitting him with 5 years' 

supervised release on top of 2 years' reimprisonment, see, e.g., 

United States v. Neal, 556 F. App'x 495, 497 (7th Cir. 2014) (per 

curiam) (rejecting an argument similar to Martínez-Pomales's); 

United States v. Black, 455 F. App'x 412, 412-13 (5th Cir. 2011) 

(per curiam) (ditto) — even assuming, as he argues, that section 

3583(h)'s subtraction principle is in play here.2

Affirmed. 

 

2 Some circuits hold that if a defendant violates his supervised 

release, a district court can impose a lifetime supervised-release 

term without deducting any jail time imposed for that same 

infraction. See United States v. Cassesse, 685 F.3d 186, 190-91 

(2d Cir. 2012) (explaining why "it is highly unlikely" that 

Congress thought that section 3583(h)'s "subtraction concept . . . 

applied to a lifetime term of supervised release" — for one, a 

court "could easily circumvent such a requirement by selecting a 

supervised release term of many years, 99 for example, and then 

imposing 'only' 98 years" — and so an "unadjusted lifetime term of 

supervised release" is not "unlawful"); United States v. Rausch, 

638 F.3d 1296, 1303 (10th Cir. 2011) (stressing that "[b]ecause it 

is impossible to predict the precise length of any individual's 

life, a [supervised release] sentence of 'life less two years [in 

prison]' has only conceptual — not practical — meaning"). We need 

not explore that topic today; it is enough to say — as we just did 

— that the 5-year supervised-release term imposed on MartínezPomales does not come anywhere close to plain error.