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23-6101-cr

United States v. Rodriguez

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

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 

Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, 40 Foley Square, in the City of New York, on the

25th day of September, two thousand twenty-three.

Present:

JOHN M. WALKER, JR.,

DENNY CHIN,

WILLIAM J. NARDINI,

Circuit Judges.

_____________________________________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Appellee,

v. 23-6101-cr

MELVIN RODRIGUEZ, AKA YB,

Defendant-Appellant.

*

_____________________________________

For Appellee: Hagan Scotten, Won S. Shin, Assistant United States 

Attorneys, for Damian Williams, United States 

Attorney for the Southern District of New York, 

New York, NY

For Defendant-Appellant: James M. Branden, Law Office of James M. 

Branden, Staten Island, NY

* The Clerk of Court is respectfully directed to amend the official caption as set forth above. 
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Appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern District of 

New York (Lewis A. Kaplan, District Judge).

UPON DUE CONSIDERATION, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND 

DECREED that the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.

Defendant-Appellant Melvin Rodriguez appeals from a judgment of the United States 

District Court for the Southern District of New York (Lewis A. Kaplan, District Judge), entered

on January 12, 2023, revoking his term of supervised release. On April 24, 2017, Rodriguez pled

guilty to a narcotics conspiracy, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 846, 841(b)(1)(C), and was sentenced 

to two years of imprisonment and three years of supervised release. Rodriguez was released from 

prison and began his term of supervised release on July 17, 2018. On December 13, 2022, the 

U.S. Probation Office filed a Second Amended Violation Petition with the district court, which 

listed nine violations of Rodriguez’s terms of supervised release. Specification 1 alleged that 

Rodriguez failed to report to his probation officer as directed on April 11, 2019. Specifications 2-

8 related to an incident on March 31, 2019, where Rodriguez was involved in a violent fight outside 

of a bar, resulting in the death of one person and serious injury to another. Specification 9 arose 

from Rodriguez attacking a corrections officer while in state custody. For these two incidents, 

Rodriguez was prosecuted in state court and ultimately convicted of three counts of assault in the 

third degree in violation of New York Penal Law 120.00(1). Following his state convictions, 

Rodriguez admitted four of the charged supervised release violations—Specifications 1, 7, 8, and 

9—and the district court sentenced Rodriguez to eighteen months in prison, to be followed by three 

years of supervised release. The sentence was above the Sentencing Guidelines’ recommended 

range of five to eleven months of imprisonment, but below the two-year statutory maximum. We 

assume the parties’ familiarity with the case.
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On appeal, Rodriguez argues that his sentence was substantively unreasonable. “Sentences 

for violations of supervised release are reviewed under the same standard as for sentencing 

generally: whether the sentence imposed is reasonable. Reasonableness is reviewed under a 

deferential abuse-of-discretion standard.” United States v. Smith, 949 F.3d 60, 65–66 (2d Cir. 

2020).

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 We are “particularly deferential” when reviewing the substantive reasonableness of a 

sentence, setting aside “only those sentences that are so shockingly high, shockingly low, or 

otherwise unsupportable as a matter of law that allowing them to stand would damage the 

administration of justice.” United States v. Muzio, 966 F.3d 61, 64 (2d Cir. 2020). Furthermore, 

“we take into account the totality of the circumstances, giving due deference to the sentencing 

judge’s exercise of discretion, and bearing in mind the institutional advantages of district courts.” 

United States v. Cavera, 550 F.3d 180, 190 (2d Cir. 2008) (en banc).

Rodriguez argues that his sentence was substantively unreasonable not only because the 

district court imposed a sentence above the Guidelines’ recommended range of five to eleven

months, but also because as a practical matter, Rodriguez will wind up serving more than thirty

months as a combined result of the time he spent in state custody that (he contends) was not 

credited to any state sentence, and the eighteen months imposed by the district court. This 

argument is unpersuasive. Rodriguez makes no argument that he was entitled to credit toward his 

federal sentence under 18 U.S.C. § 3585 for any of the time he spent in state custody. His argument 

is therefore limited to the contention that the district court failed to adequately take into account 

the overall amount of time that he would spend in custody as a result of his constellation of state 

and federal violations. But the district court expressly stated that it took into consideration the 

time that Rodriguez spent in state custody, as it would have otherwise imposed the two-year 

1 Unless otherwise indicated, case quotations omit all internal quotation marks, alterations, footnotes, and citations.
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statutory maximum. App’x at 111. We discern nothing improper about the district court’s decision 

to impose an eighteen-month sentence in these circumstances. See Cavera, 550 F.3d at 191.

Rodriguez also argues that the district court inappropriately focused on the severity of his

new criminal conduct and criminal history rather than the breach of trust that should be the focus 

of a sentencing for a supervised release violation. The district court specifically noted, however, 

that Rodriguez’s conduct constituted a “gross breach of trust.” App’x at 111. The Specifications 

to which Rodriguez pled guilty amply support this conclusion, encompassing conduct whereby 

Rodriguez punched two individuals in a fight, kicked one of them in the head while he was 

immobilized on the ground, and punched a corrections officer in the face and bit him on the neck. 

Here, the seriousness of Rodriguez’s criminal conduct while on supervised release was one 

appropriate measure of the extent to which he had breached the court’s trust. Moreover, above 

and beyond any breach of trust, the district court could independently consider the severity of the 

underlying conduct and Rodriguez’s criminal history. 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e); United States v. 

Ramos, 979 F.3d 994, 1003 (2d Cir. 2020). Therefore, given the totality of the circumstances, the 

sentence imposed was reasonable, and not so “shockingly high” that permitting it to stand “would 

damage the administration of justice.”

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For the reasons stated above, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.

FOR THE COURT:

Catherine O’Hagan Wolfe, Clerk