Opinion ID: 4315140
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Considering Counts One and Three

Text: Mayendía says the district court erred in considering Counts One and Three in its actual loss calculation because the conduct from these counts was not supported by a preponderance of the evidence. The government responds that Mayendía waived or forfeited this argument, but even if he didn't that it fails on the merits. We find that Mayendía waived his argument due to his failure to raise the preponderance of evidence argument in his opening brief. We deem an argument to be waived when a party intentionally relinquishes or abandons it. United States v. Rodriguez, 311 F.3d 435, 437 (1st Cir. 2002). [A] waived issue ordinarily cannot be resurrected on appeal. Id. Relevant here, 13The majority does not recast Mayendía's argument as the dissent suggests we have done. Rather, we simply repeat his argument as we understand it to be. - 10 - it is a well-settled principle that arguments not raised by a party in its opening brief are waived. Landrau-Romero v. Banco Popular De P.R., 212 F.3d 607, 616 (1st Cir. 2000) (citing P.R. Tel. Co. v. Telecomm. Regulatory Bd. Of P.R., 189 F.3d 1, 17 n.14 (1st Cir. 1999)); see also Vargas-Colón v. Fundación Damas, Inc., 864 F.3d 14, 23-25 (1st Cir. 2017). As we laid out before, Mayendía made three arguments before the district court concerning the PSR's recommendation that Counts One and Three should be incorporated into the loss calculation, but failed to raise those arguments even implicitly in his opening brief, only raising them later in his supplemental brief, incorporated by reference from his supplemental brief in support of his bail motion. Mayendía asks that we excuse the silence in his opening brief because of the initial ambiguity before the district court, as well as the two-appeal timeline because of our initial remand. We decline to do so. We have accepted arguments raised for the first time in supplemental briefing under exceptional circumstances, such as a substantial change in applicable law, see United States v. Vázquez-Rivera, 407 F.3d 476, 487 (1st Cir. 2005), or even excused waiver when justice so requires. United States v. Fields, 823 F.3d 20, 32 n.8 (1st Cir. 2016) (citing United States v. Torres-Rosario, 658 F.3d 110, 116 (1st Cir. 2011)). However, to do either in this case would be inappropriate for two reasons. First, though our initial remand to the district court - 11 - added an additional step to the proceedings, it cannot be said that it was a particularly complicated or unusual one. A remand like the one here is not an exceptional circumstance warranting an exception to our waiver doctrine. See Sindi v. El-Moslimany, 896 F.3d 1, 27-28 (1st Cir. 2018) (listing examples of exceptional circumstances, including when the inadequately preserved arguments are purely legal, are amenable to resolution without additional factfinding, are susceptible to resolution without causing undue prejudice, are highly convincing, are capable of repetition, and implicate matters of significant public concern); United States v. Pelullo, 399 F.3d 197, 222 n.30 (3d Cir. 2005), as amended (Mar. 8, 2005) (explaining that the defendant's proffered justification for excusal of waiver, the complexity of the case, with its voluminous record and myriad factual and legal questions, was less than compelling). Second, Counts One and Three were very visible on the horizon to Mayendía, which we know because he fought to keep them out of the guidelines calculation before the district court at sentencing, arguing that they could not be considered because [t]here ha[d] been no such finding by a jury or admission by defendant relating to those counts, and explained in both his first bail brief and his opening appellate brief that the PSR's loss calculation was based on the sum of the down payments from all three counts. See United States v. Koon Chung Wu, 217 F. App'x 240, 246 n.4 (4th Cir. 2007) - 12 - (unpublished) (finding defendant's argument raised for the first time on appeal waived because this argument was readily available to him at the time he filed his opening brief). In other words, lacking any notable exceptional circumstance and given Mayendía's clear awareness that the issue of loss calculation from Counts One and Three was a significant issue both below at sentencing and on appeal, we deem Mayendía's argument concerning consideration of Counts One and Three as relevant conduct to be waived.14 We now proceed to the second and final comedy of errors Mayendía alleges with the district court's calculation of actual loss--consideration of the value of collateral in his loss calculation.