Not for Publication in West's Federal Reporter 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the First Circuit 

No. 15-2060 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Appellee, 

v. 

WILLIAM ZAYAS-RODRIGUEZ, 

Defendant, Appellant. 

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO 

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

Before 

Lynch, Circuit Judge, 

Souter, Associate Justice,*

and Selya, Circuit Judge. 

Barbara J. Sweeney on brief for appellant. 

Tiffany V. Monrose, Assistant United States Attorney, Mariana 

E. Bauzá-Almonte, Assistant United States Attorney, Chief, 

Appellate Division, and Rosa Emilia Rodríguez-Vélez, United States 

Attorney, on brief for appellee. 

January 18, 2017 

 * Hon. David H. Souter, Associate Justice (Ret.) of the 

Supreme Court of the United States, sitting by designation. 
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LYNCH, Circuit Judge. William Zayas-Rodriguez pled 

guilty to possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug 

trafficking crime and received a sentence of 70 months' 

imprisonment. We reject his challenges to the procedural and 

substantive reasonableness of his sentence and affirm. 

I. 

On April 21, 2014, a police cruiser in Cayey, Puerto 

Rico attempted to stop a car that appeared to have illegally tinted 

windows. The car sped off, but after a chase the police detained 

it and identified its driver as Zayas-Rodriguez. While checking 

Zayas-Rodriguez's license and registration, an officer noticed a 

pistol "in plain view, partially hidden under the [car's] front 

passenger seat." The car also contained $1,033 in cash, as well 

as significant amounts of ammunition and controlled substances. 

On September 4, 2014, Zayas-Rodriguez agreed to plead 

guilty to possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug 

trafficking crime. See 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A)(i). That offense 

triggers a mandatory minimum sentence of 60 months, id., and so 60 

months was the advisory sentence under the Sentencing Guidelines, 

see U.S.S.G. § 2K2.4(b) (providing that, for § 924(c) convictions, 

"the guideline sentence is the minimum term of imprisonment"). In 

the non-binding plea agreement, the government agreed to recommend 

a 60-month sentence and to request dismissal of the other charges 
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at sentencing. The district court accepted the plea on October 

15, 2014. 

On August 25, 2015, at sentencing, Zayas-Rodriguez's 

counsel did not object to any of the information in the PreSentence Report ("PSR"), and Zayas-Rodriguez himself confirmed 

that the PSR's facts were accurate. The district court, after 

stating that it had "considered the sentencing factors under [18 

U.S.C. §] 3553(a)," the plea agreement, and its obligation to 

"impos[e] a sentence that [wa]s not harsher than necessary," chose 

to impose a 70-month sentence. The court explained that it had 

taken into account Zayas-Rodriguez's numerous prior arrests and 

convictions, as well as "the elements of the instant offense." 

Zayas-Rodriguez timely appealed. 

II. 

Zayas-Rodriguez claims that his sentence was both 

procedurally and substantively unreasonable.1 His arguments fail. 

A. Procedural Reasonableness 

We need not resolve the parties' disagreement as to the 

appropriate standard of review because there was no abuse of 

 1 As the government concedes, the plea agreement's waiverof-appeal clause does not bar this appeal because the district 

court varied upward from the agreement's joint sentencing 

recommendation. See United States v. Rivera-González, 776 F.3d 

45, 48–49 (1st Cir. 2015). 
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discretion, much less plain error, in the sentence's procedural 

reasonableness. 

First, Zayas-Rodriguez argues that his sentence was 

procedurally unreasonable because the district court 

"extemporaneously" calculated a criminal history score without 

giving him notice of the data or methodology used. But the court 

explicitly confirmed its awareness that "the provisions of Chapter 

4 of the Sentencing Guidelines do not apply to . . . [§] 924(c) 

violations," and when viewed in context, its calculation was merely 

a remark meant to help illustrate, for § 3553(a) purposes, the 

extensiveness of Zayas-Rodriguez's arrest record. See United 

States v. Flores-Machicote, 706 F.3d 16, 21 (1st Cir. 2013) 

(observing that § 3553(a)(1) instructs sentencing judges to 

consider the defendant's "history and characteristics"). And the 

court had no obligation to give advance notice that it might choose 

an upward variance based on facts contained in the PSR. See 

Irizarry v. United States, 553 U.S. 708, 713–14 (2008). 

As a corollary to his first argument, Zayas-Rodriguez 

argues next that the district court mischaracterized one of his 

prior offenses as a "carjacking," when in fact the offense was an 

illegal appropriation. Even assuming arguendo that the court 

misunderstood the precise nature of that prior offense, the 

argument still falls short; any error was harmless. Because the 

district court's broader point was the extensiveness of the arrest 
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record, we are satisfied that the court's misunderstanding, if 

any, had no effect on the sentence. See United States v. Alphas, 

785 F.3d 775, 780 (1st Cir. 2015) (citing Williams v. United 

States, 503 U.S. 193, 203 (1992)). 

Finally, Zayas-Rodriguez argues that his sentence was 

procedurally unreasonable because the district court gave undue 

consideration to the effects of gun violence on Puerto Rico's 

citizens. But as we have repeatedly stated, a district court may 

consider such issues as deterrence-related factors that help to 

justify an upward variance, so long as the court does not "focus 

too much on the community and too little on the individual 

[defendant]." Flores-Machicote, 706 F.3d at 24; see also, e.g., 

United States v. Pedroza-Orengo, 817 F.3d 829, 834 (1st Cir. 2016); 

United States v. Pantojas-Cruz, 800 F.3d 54, 59-60 (1st Cir. 2015); 

United States v. Narváez-Soto, 773 F.3d 282, 285–86 (1st Cir. 

2014); United States v. Politano, 522 F.3d 69, 73–74 (1st Cir. 

2008). In Zayas-Rodriguez's case, the court appropriately tied 

the community-based factors to the other § 3553(a) factors and to 

his individual circumstances -- particularly the fact that the 

police had found drugs, in addition to a firearm, when they 

searched his car. 

B. Substantive Reasonableness 

Zayas-Rodriguez also claims that his sentence was 

substantively unreasonable. Once again, we need not resolve any 
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uncertainty over the appropriate standard of review2 because the 

sentence was substantively reasonable under any standard. The 

district court's "ultimate responsibility [wa]s to articulate a 

plausible rationale and arrive at a sensible result," United 

States v. Carrasco-de-Jesús, 589 F.3d 22, 30 (1st Cir. 2009), and 

it met those obligations by plausibly reasoning that ZayasRodriguez's extensive criminal history and the "serious 

combination" of weapons and drugs found in his car warranted a 

modest upward variance from the mandatory minimum. "That the 

sentencing court chose not to attach to certain of the mitigating 

factors the significance that [Zayas-Rodriguez] thinks they 

deserved does not make the sentence unreasonable." United States 

v. Clogston, 662 F.3d 588, 593 (1st Cir. 2011). 

III. 

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm Zayas-Rodriguez's 

sentence. 

 2 It is not settled whether "a failure to . . . object[] 

in the district court to the substantive reasonableness of a 

sentence begets plain error review" or abuse of discretion review. 

United States v. Ruiz-Huertas, 792 F.3d 223, 228 (1st Cir.), cert. 

denied, 136 S. Ct. 258 (2015).