[DO NOT PUBLISH]

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eleventh Circuit

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No. 21-10886

Non-Argument Calendar

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee,

versus

VONNE ROLLE, 

Defendant-Appellant.

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Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of Florida

D.C. Docket No. 2:20-cr-14029-JEM-1

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2 Opinion of the Court 21-10886

Before ROSENBAUM, GRANT, and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

Vonne Rolle tried to smuggle migrants—including a

previously deported aggravated felon—into the United States. The 

plan was to transport them by boat from the Bahamas to the 

Florida coast. It was not his first time around the block; four years 

earlier, the U.S. Coast Guard had caught him smuggling migrants

when it discovered his disabled ship offshore. And here they 

caught him again when his boat ran out of gas. After the Coast 

Guard brought Rolle ashore, he told federal agents that he had 

captained the boat and would do it again if released. The district 

court looked at Rolle’s history of smuggling attempts—and his 

apparent desire to keep making them—and imposed a withinGuidelines sentence. Rolle challenges that sentence as 

unreasonable. We disagree and affirm. 

I. 

Vonne Rolle captained a boat smuggling migrants into the 

United States. The journey started at the Grand Bahama Island. 

Twelve passengers climbed aboard—twice the intended capacity 

of the 24-foot motorboat. Meanwhile a storm approached; as 

evening fell, a Tropical Storm Warning was announced for the 

island, then a Hurricane Warning. 

But around 8:00 p.m. Rolle’s boat left anyway. The 

overladen vessel sat low in the water. Rough waves battered its 

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sides, and passengers begged Rolle to turn around. Yet Rolle 

continued toward the Florida coast. 

Halfway through the trip, the boat took on too much water. 

The passengers spent the night bailing it out. Despite the flooding, 

Rolle came within 3.8 miles of the shore. Then the propellor 

detached from the boat, and the engine failed. The boat drifted 

away from the shore until Rolle reattached the propellor, restarted 

the engine, and began driving back toward Florida. But Rolle had 

not yet reached shore when the boat ran out of gas. Rolle cut the 

boat’s fuel line and threw it in the tank to no avail. The boat was 

again set adrift. The passengers—who had not brought food or 

water when they boarded the night before—began to signal for aid. 

Late that morning, about 23 miles offshore, a fisherman 

noticed them, threw them water, and called the U.S. Coast Guard

for help. By the time the Coast Guard arrived, the boat had drifted 

three miles further asea. The Coast Guard took aboard Rolle and 

his passengers, brought them to Florida, and placed them in the 

custody of the U.S. Border Patrol. Federal officers interviewed 

Rolle about the trip; during that interview, he told them that he 

had captained the ship and that, if he were released, he “would do 

it all again.” 

Federal officers soon discovered that one passenger was a 

minor and that another was an aggravated felon that the United 

States had previously removed. The United States had also 

removed Rolle just two years prior, after he had served an 

18-month sentence for encouraging and inducing noncitizens to 

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come to the United States. There too he had tried and failed to 

smuggle noncitizens into the country by boat. 

For Rolle’s most recent smuggling attempt, the United 

States charged him with bringing noncitizens into the United 

States, in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1)(A)(i) and (B)(iii), and 

with aiding and assisting an aggravated felon to enter the United 

States, in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1327. Rolle pleaded guilty. Before 

sentencing, however, he challenged the two-level “special skill” 

enhancement that the government had recommended and asked 

for a downward variance from the Guidelines range of 151 to 188 

months. The district court overruled Rolle’s objection to the 

special-skill enhancement. The court also decided to sentence 

Rolle to a within-Guidelines sentence of 151 months’ 

imprisonment because of Rolle’s history of smuggling attempts—

and his plan to make future ones. This appeal followed.

II. 

Rolle challenges the reasonableness of his sentence, which 

we review for an abuse of discretion. United States v. Gomez, 955 

F.3d 1250, 1255 (11th Cir. 2020). That review proceeds in two 

steps. Id.

First, we check whether the district court committed a 

“significant procedural error.” United States v. Kuhlman, 711 F.3d 

1321, 1326 (11th Cir. 2013). Rolle contends that such an error 

occurred when, at his sentencing hearing, the district court 

declined to hear testimony that captaining a boat from the 

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21-10886 Opinion of the Court 5

Bahamas to Florida was not a special skill.1 A district court must 

give a defendant “an adequate opportunity to present information 

to the court” about “any factor important to the sentencing 

determination” that is “reasonably in dispute.” U.S. Sentencing 

Guidelines § 6A1.3(a) (Nov. 2018). Yet a sentencing court has 

leeway to choose how to provide that opportunity—for example, 

it “may,” but need not, permit a defendant “to introduce evidence 

on the objections” at the sentencing hearing. Fed. R. Crim. P. 

32(i)(2). To make that choice, the court looks to “the nature of the 

dispute, its relevance to the sentencing determination, and 

applicable case law.” U.S.S.G. § 6A1.3 cmt.

Here, the relevant sentencing determination is the 

special-skill enhancement: a two-level enhancement imposed on 

defendants who “used a special skill, in a manner that significantly 

facilitated the commission or concealment of the offense.” Id. 

§ 3B1.3. A special skill, in turn, is one “not possessed by members 

of the general public.” Id. § 3B1.3 cmt. n.4. So if the “average 

person off the street” lacks a skill, it’s special. United States v. De 

La Cruz Suarez, 601 F.3d 1202, 1219 (11th Cir. 2010).

The court already had information about Rolle’s smuggling 

attempt in the record; in a proffer, Rolle and the government 

1 Rolle has moved to supplement the record with an affidavit setting forth the 

substance of the proposed testimony. Because that affidavit is relevant to his 

procedural challenge and helps us make a more informed decision on that 

issue, we grant his motion. See Corbett v. Transp. Sec. Admin., 930 F.3d 1225, 

1230 n.1 (11th Cir. 2019).

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stipulated what had happened. And the district court needed to 

look no further than the proffer and precedent to determine 

whether Rolle had used a special skill to facilitate this smuggling 

attempt. This Court has already explained “that captaining a vessel 

on the high seas is the type of activity that requires skills not 

possessed by members of the general public and, therefore, 

requires ‘special skills.’” United States v. Calderon, 127 F.3d 1314, 

1339 (11th Cir. 1997). Because Rolle stipulated that he had 

captained his boat on the high seas to reach Florida, the district 

court had all the information it needed to conclude that he had 

used a special skill, and the proposed testimony would have made 

no difference. The district court thus committed no procedural 

error when it declined to hear that testimony.

Second, we review the substantive reasonableness of the 

sentence. See Gomez, 955 F.3d at 1255. As part of that review, we 

check whether the district court ignored “relevant factors that were 

due significant weight,” whether it gave “significant weight to an 

improper or irrelevant factor,” or whether it made “a clear error of 

judgment in considering the proper factors,” such as by balancing 

those factors unreasonably. United States v. Irey, 612 F.3d 1160, 

1189 (11th Cir. 2010) (en banc). 

We start with the length of the sentence itself. Sentences are 

generally reasonable when they “fall within the Guidelines range” 

or “below the statutory maximum.” See United States v. Muho, 

978 F.3d 1212, 1227 (11th Cir. 2020). And the 151-month sentence 

here has both features: it falls at the bottom of the Guidelines range 

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and far below the statutory maximum sentence of 20 years’ 

imprisonment. See 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1)(B)(iii).

Rolle contends that his sentence was nonetheless 

unreasonable because, to reach it, the district court placed too 

much weight on his criminal history and his post-arrest statement 

that he would smuggle migrants again. But the district court’s 

reliance on those factors was justifiable. Rolle had not once, but 

twice, tried to smuggle migrants by boat. Both times he became 

stranded offshore and needed the Coast Guard’s help to reach land 

safely. And despite the dangers his passengers had faced—and his 

prior sentence of 18 months’ imprisonment—after arrest he 

announced his willingness to “do it all again.” True, once Rolle 

faced a recommended sentence of 151 to 188 months’ 

imprisonment, his tune changed: at sentencing he told the court 

that he “wouldn’t do it again.” The court could have taken this 

last-minute statement, however, as further evidence that a withinGuidelines sentence was necessary “to promote respect for the 

law,” “to afford adequate deterrence,” and “to protect the public 

from further crimes.” 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(2). The district court’s 

sentence therefore was reasonable.

We AFFIRM.

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