11-14-cr

United States v. Guzman-Betancourt

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

AMENDED SUMMARY ORDER

Rulings by summary order do not have precedential effect. Citation to a summary order filed

on or after January 1, 2007, is permitted and is governed by Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 32.1

and this Court’s Local Rule 32.1.1. When citing a summary order in a document filed with this Court,

a party must cite either the Federal Appendix or an electronic database (with the notation “summary

order”). A party citing a summary order must serve a copy of it on any party not represented by

counsel.

At a stated term of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, held at the Daniel

Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse, 500 Pearl Street, in the City of New York, on the 7th day

of March, two thousand and twelve.

PRESENT:

AMALYA L. KEARSE,

JOSÉ A. CABRANES,

ROBERT D. SACK,

Circuit Judges.

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UNITED STATES,

Appellee,

v. No. 11-14-cr 

JUAN CARLOS GUZMAN-BETANCOURT,

Defendant-Appellant.

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FOR DEFENDANT-APPELLANT: BARCLAY JOHNSON, Assistant Federal Public

Defender (Steven L. Barth, Assistant Federal

Public Defender, of counsel), for Michael L.

Desautels, Federal Public Defender, Office of

the Federal Public Defender, Burlington, VT.

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FOR APPELLEE: TIMOTHY C. DOHERTY, JR., Assistant United

States Attorney (Gregory L. Waples, Assistant

United States Attorney, of counsel), for Tristram

J. Coffin, United States Attorney for the

District of Vermont, Burlington, VT. 

Appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the District of Vermont (J.

Garvan Murtha, Judge). 

UPON CONSIDERATION WHEREOF, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED,

ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that the judgment of the District Court is AFFIRMED.

Juan Carlos Guzman-Betancourt appeals from a thirty-month prison sentence imposed on

December 13, 2010, following his plea of guilty to one count of illegally reentering the United States

after having been previously deported. in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326(a). 

We review the reasonableness of a district court’s sentencing determinations under a

“deferential abuse-of-discretion standard.” Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 41 (2007); see generally

Sims v. Blot, 534 F.3d 117, 132 (2d Cir. 2008) (“A district court has abuse[d] its discretion if it based

its ruling on an erroneous view of the law or on a clearly erroneous assessment of the evidence, or

rendered a decision that cannot be located within the range of permissible decisions.”) (internal

citation and quotation marks omitted). “This form of appellate scrutiny encompasses two

components: procedural review and substantive review.” United States v. Cavera, 550 F.3d 180, 189

(2d Cir. 2008) (en banc). With respect to procedural error, we have explained that

[a] district court commits procedural error where it fails to calculate the

Guidelines range, . . . makes a mistake in its Guidelines calculation, or

treats the Guidelines as mandatory. It also errs procedurally if it does

not consider the [18 U.S.C.] § 3553(a) factors, or rests its sentence on

a clearly erroneous finding of fact. Moreover, a district court errs if it

fails adequately to explain its chosen sentence, and must include an

explanation for any deviation from the Guidelines range. 

Id. at 190 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). With respect to substantive

reasonableness, “we will not substitute our own judgment for the district court’s on the question of

what is sufficient to meet the § 3553(a) considerations in any particular case.” Id. at 189. Rather, we

will only set aside a district court’s substantive determination “in exceptional cases where the trial

court’s decision cannot be located within the range of permissible decisions.” Id. at 189 (internal

quotation marks omitted). 

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I.

Guzman-Betancourt argues first that the District Court procedurally erred in imposing a

three-level upward departure in his criminal history category, from category III to category VI, in

light of his foreign criminal convictions. Specifically, the District Court added three levels to

Guzman-Betancourt’s criminal history category to account for a 2005 conviction in the United

Kingdom (“U.K.”) on two counts of burglary and another 2005 conviction in Ireland on one count

of burglary, and four counts of making a gain by deception.1

 Guzman-Betancourt contends that

there was no reliable information sufficient to permit the consideration of these two convictions. 

As a preliminary matter, we note that the Government argues that this contention is subject

only to plain-error review because Guzman-Betancourt did not raise this reliability contention in the

District Court. Guzman-Betancourt contends that the issue was raised when he argued that “‘[a]

criminal history departure/variance is not warranted’” (Appellant’s Reply Br. at 10 (citing his

Sentencing Memorandum)) and when his attorney stated “we don’t really know the details” of

Guzman-Betancourt’s last “foreign conviction” and suggested that his 42-month sentence on that

conviction was for a “petty” offense. (See id. at 11). Neither the broad statement in the

memorandum that a criminal-history departure was unwarranted nor counsel’s profession of

ignorance as to the details of the U.K. conviction—a sentence fragment in the middle of counsel’s

argument that spanned some nine pages of transcript—was sufficient to “br[ing] to the [District

Court’s] attention,” Fed. R. Crim. P. 52(b), Guzman-Betancourt’s present contention that the

information concerning his foreign convictions was unreliable. Where a defendant “did not

specifically raise []his argument below,” he is not entitled to more than plain error review. United

States v. Rappaport, 999 F.2d 57, 59 (2d Cir. 1993).

Regardless of the standard of review, however, it is clear in the present case that the District

Court committed no error, much less one that meets the plain-error standard, see generally Johnson v.

United States, 520 U.S. 461, 466-67 (1997); United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 732 (1993). A district

court may depart to a higher criminal history category “[i]f reliable information indicates that the

defendant’s criminal history category substantially under-represents the seriousness of the

defendant’s criminal history or the likelihood that the defendant will commit other crimes.” 

U.S.S.G. § 4A1.3(a)(1). The Guidelines make clear that “reliable information” may include “[p]rior

sentence(s) not used in computing the criminal history category (e.g., sentences used for foreign and

tribal offenses).” Id. § 4A1.3(a)(2)(A). We review de novo whether a particular factor is a permissible

1

 Guzman-Betancourt was sentenced to forty-two months’ imprisonment on the burglary

counts in the United Kingdom, but escaped from Her Majesty’s Prison at Stanford Hill on June 6,

2005. Shortly thereafter, he was arrested in Ireland, and ultimately sentenced to two years on the

burglary count and eighteen months on the deception counts, to be served concurrently. 

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basis for a departure. United States v. Simmons, 343 F.3d 72, 78 (2d Cir. 2003). 

Guzman-Betancourt’s argument is virtually foreclosed by our decision in Simmons, where we

approved a district court’s upward departure under § 4A1.3(a)(1) based on foreign convictions. See

343 F.3d at 78–79. As in Simmons, the crimes for which Guzman-Betancourt was convicted in the

U.K. and Ireland—two common law countries with legal traditions similar to our own—are not

obscure. See id. at 79. Guzman-Betancourt, who was in the best position to describe the nature of

these offenses, never suggested that his foreign convictions “were something other than what they

seem,” id.—that is, for something other than burglary and fraud. Furthermore, based on the

sentences he received, it does not appear that these were merely “petty thefts and frauds,” as

Guzman-Betancourt characterizes them. There is, in short, no basis for his argument that the

information relating to his prior foreign convictions was unreliable. Accordingly, we conclude that

the District Court did not err, let alone plainly err, by considering these convictions in departing

upward.

II.

Guzman-Betancourt also argues that the District Court procedurally erred by failing to

consider all of the sentencing factors under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) and failing to adequately explain its

chosen sentence. A sentencing court is required to “state in open court the reasons for its

imposition of the particular sentence.” 18 U.S.C. § 3553(c) (2006). The primary interest served by

this requirement is “to ensure that district courts actually consider the statutory factors and reach

reasoned decisions.” Cavera, 550 F.3d at 193. “‘In determining whether the district court has

considered the appropriate factors, we do not require robotic incantations by the sentencing judge. 

In the absence of record evidence suggesting otherwise, we presume that the district court has

faithfully discharged its duty to consider the § 3553(a) factors.’” United States v. Payne, 591 F.3d 46, 71

(2d Cir. 2010) (quoting United States v. Carr, 557 F.3d 93, 107 (2d Cir. 2009) (internal quotation marks

and citations omitted)).

Nothing in the record suggests that the District Court failed to discharge its duty in this case. 

To the contrary, the District Court clearly stated that it had considered the statutory factors and

concluded that a thirty-month sentence—that is, one higher than Guzman-Betancourt’s requested

sentence of time served, but well short of the Government’s request of the ten-year statutory

maximum—was “the appropriate sentence under the guidelines and also under Section 3553(a).” 

The record of the sentencing hearing also makes clear that the District Court considered—and

accepted—Guzman-Betancourt’s arguments that he should be entitled to a two-level reduction for

acceptance of responsibility and that he had already been punished for many of the crimes he had

committed in the past. That the Court rejected Guzman-Betancourt’s other arguments in mitigation

does not mean that they were not considered. 

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III.

Finally, Guzman-Betancourt argues that the thirty-month sentence imposed by the District

Court was substantively unreasonable. A challenge to the substantive reasonableness of a sentence

“reduces to a single question: ‘whether the District Judge abused his discretion in determining that

the § 3553(a) factors supported’ the sentence imposed.” United States v. Jones, 531 F.3d 163, 170 (2d

Cir. 2008) (quoting Gall, 552 U.S. at 56). We will reverse a sentence based on substantive

unreasonableness only in those “few cases that, although procedurally correct, would nonetheless

damage the administration of justice because the sentence imposed was shockingly high, shockingly

low, or otherwise unsupportable as a matter of law.” United States v. Rigas, 583 F.3d 108, 123 (2d Cir.

2009). 

Under this standard, we have no difficulty in concluding that the thirty-month sentence

imposed by the District Court, even though above the technical Guidelines range, was not

shockingly high. Guzman-Betancourt pleaded guilty to illegal reentry, having already been convicted

of this crime twice before and having been previously deported from the United States four times. 

In 1996, he was sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment by a federal judge in Florida for illegal

reentry. In the time between that sentence and his arrest for illegal reentry in this case, GuzmanBetancourt: (1) attempted to illegally reenter the United States, but was refused entry; (2) was

convicted in New York of grand larceny and jailed for nine months; (3) was convicted in the U.K.

for burglary and sentenced to 42 months imprisonment; (4) escaped from prison in the U.K.; (5) was

convicted of burglary and deception in Ireland and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment; (6) was

charged with property crimes in Las Vegas and Switzerland; and (7) illegally entered the United

States once again. It is clear that Guzman-Betancourt’s previous periods of incarceration have not

deterred him from a life of crime. Therefore, it was entirely reasonable for the District Court to

conclude that “there needs to be a ratcheting up [of the] sentence” from the eighteen-month

sentence he had received for his previous illegal-reentry conviction. In light of these facts, the

resulting thirty-month sentence was not “shockingly high . . . or otherwise unsupportable.” Rigas,

583 F.3d at 123.

CONCLUSION

We have considered all of Guzman-Betancourt’s arguments on appeal and find them to be

without merit. Accordingly, for the reasons stated above, we AFFIRM the sentence imposed by the

District Court.

FOR THE COURT,

Catherine O’Hagan Wolfe, Clerk of Court

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