Court Opinion

ID: 9864692
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 15:00:29.798118+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:24:17.586669
License: Public Domain

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). 1 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.”

                                         *      *       *

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

                                                     FOR THE COURT:

                                                     Catherine O’Hagan Wolfe, Clerk

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