Opinion ID: 4513537
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Mr. Orozco has failed to establish prejudice.

Text: Under the plea agreement, Mr. Orozco faced a sentence of 63 to 78 months. He was sentenced to 72 months. Without the plea agreement, he would have faced a sentence of 77 to 96 months. So to satisfy the more-favorable-result requirement, he must show a reasonable probability that the district court would have departed or varied downward had he entered an open plea. As stated above, “[a] reasonable probability is a probability sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 694. In determining whether he made this showing, we consider all the circumstances of the case. Id. at 695. And we recognize that the evaluation “should proceed on the assumption that the decisionmaker is reasonably, conscientiously, and impartially applying the standards that govern the decision” and “should not depend on the idiosyncracies of the particular decisionmaker, such as unusual propensities toward harshness or leniency.” Id. But Mr. Orozco discusses his various grounds for a downward departure or variance only with regard to whether he would have entered an open plea, how the district court erred in considering its own subjective views, and how the arguments would have altered his decision-making. He does not argue how these grounds 16 establish a reasonable probability that he would have received a lower sentence had he entered an open plea. His failure to adequately address this issue in his opening brief results in a waiver on appeal. See Baca v. Berry, 806 F.3d 1262, 1276 (10th Cir. 2015). Even if Mr. Orozco had adequately briefed this issue, however, we would conclude that he did not establish prejudice. He identifies the following grounds for a downward departure or variance: (1) the “outsized impact” a 17-year-old prior conviction had on the offense level and criminal-history category, Opening Br. at 58-59; (2) his nonviolent criminal history, which distinguishes him from others in criminal-history category VI; (3) the unfairness of adding points for committing the instant offense while under supervised release from the prior conviction, because after his sentencing the relevant Guideline was amended to suggest that a defendant subject to deportation not be sentenced to supervised release; and (4) his imperfect-duress defense. With respect to the first two grounds, we agree with the district court that “the totality of Mr. Orozco-Sanchez’s criminal history,” particularly his repeated illegal entries into the United States, would “weigh[] against granting a significant departure or variance.” R. at 634. Notwithstanding their nonviolent nature, Mr. Orozco’s violations were numerous: in addition to the 17-year-old 1998 conviction for alien smuggling, he accrued convictions for illegal reentry in 2000, 2005, and 2011. Of particular importance, the sentence in his 2011 case was 63 months, and that was not 17 sufficient to deter him from illegally reentering two weeks after he was released from prison in 2015. We also strongly doubt that the supervised-release argument would have been persuasive at sentencing. As Mr. Orozco acknowledges, the Guideline was amended after he was sentenced. Thus, he had been properly subjected to a term of supervised release, which he did in fact violate. And finally, we agree with the district court that there is no reasonable probability that the imperfect-duress defense would have resulted in a sentence lower than the 72 months Mr. Orozco received. The defense was implausible (he asserted in 2011 as an excuse for his reentry that drug cartels wanted to kill him, and in 1998 he gave the excuse that he was forced at knifepoint to transport aliens). And it was contradicted by Mr. Orozco’s admission under oath that he had knowingly and voluntarily reentered the United States. We therefore affirm the denial of relief on this ineffective-assistance claim.