Court Opinion

ID: 9366409
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-01-26 18:01:52.219514+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:15:52.004452
License: Public Domain

Appellate Case: 22-2067     Document: 010110804197   Date Filed: 01/26/2023   Page: 1
                                                                FILED
                                                    United States Court of Appeals
                     UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS         Tenth Circuit

                           FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT                       January 26, 2023
                       _________________________________
                                                                     Christopher M. Wolpert
                                                                         Clerk of Court
  UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

           Plaintiff - Appellee,

  v.                                               Nos. 22-2067, 22-2068
                                             (D.C. Nos. 2:21-CR-01478-MIS-1 &
  CRUZ JOSE MARTINEZ-RIOS,                         2:16-CR-00468-MIS-1)
                                                          (D.N.M.)
           Defendant - Appellant.
                       _________________________________

                           ORDER AND JUDGMENT *
                       _________________________________

 Before PHILLIPS, MURPHY, and EID, Circuit Judges.
                  _________________________________

       Appellant Cruz Jose Martinez-Rios appeals two judgments against him.

 The first is a fifty-seven-month sentence for reentry of a removed alien. The

 second is an eight-month sentence for violating the terms of supervised release

 by committing that same crime. Martinez-Rios admitted his guilt for both

 offenses. He does not provide actionable grounds for an appeal, and his

 appellate counsel filed a brief under Anders v. California, 386 U.S. 738 (1967).

       *
         This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the
 doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It may be
 cited, however, for its persuasive value consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1
 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1. After examining the briefs and appellate record, this
 panel has determined unanimously to honor Appellant’s request for a decision
 on the briefs without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(f); 10th Cir. R.
 34.1(G). The case is therefore submitted without oral argument.
Appellate Case: 22-2067   Document: 010110804197     Date Filed: 01/26/2023   Page: 2

 We agree with Martinez-Rios’s counsel that no non-frivolous grounds for an

 appeal exist. We thus grant counsel’s motion to withdraw, and we dismiss these

 appeals.

                                 BACKGROUND

       Cruz Jose Martinez-Rios has a long criminal history. In 2009, he sexually

 assaulted an eighteen-year-old individual, for which a state court sentenced him

 to seventy-seven months’ incarceration and ten years’ conditional release. In

 2015, he unlawfully entered the United States in Grant County, New Mexico,

 for which a district court sentenced him to eight months’ imprisonment and

 three years’ supervised release. In 2021, he again unlawfully entered the United

 States in Hidalgo County, New Mexico. The district court sentenced

 Martinez-Rios to fifty-seven months’ imprisonment for that crime. And because

 the crime separately violated the terms of Martinez-Rios’s three-year

 supervision, 1 the district court also sentenced him to a concurrent eight-month

 sentence for the violation.

       Martinez-Rios pled unconditionally guilty to his 2021 unlawful entry

 without a plea agreement. At his plea hearing, Martinez-Rios (through an

       1
         Martinez-Rios was transferred to a state prison after his federal
 incarceration for his 2015 unlawful entry and was later deported in December
 2020. His three-year term of supervised release did not begin to run until his
 release from state prison. See 18 U.S.C. § 3624(e) (“A term of supervised
 release does not run during any period in which the person is imprisoned in
 connection with a conviction for a Federal, State, or local crime unless the
 imprisonment is for a period of less than 30 consecutive days.”).
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Appellate Case: 22-2067   Document: 010110804197     Date Filed: 01/26/2023    Page: 3

 interpreter) admitted his guilt in open court, including that he was a “citizen[]

 of Mexico” and yet came to “New Mexico after having been previously

 deported.” Suppl. R. vol. 4, at 14-15. And he acknowledged that the

 government could have proved his unlawful entry beyond a reasonable doubt.

 He also admitted that he was satisfied with his counsel’s performance.

       Martinez-Rios similarly admitted to violating the terms of his supervised

 release. At the revocation and sentencing hearing, Martinez-Rios admitted to

 the violation in open court. He asked the court for “forgiveness for having

 jumped the fence” and promised “not [to] do it again.” Id. at 34-35. And he

 again acknowledged his satisfaction with counsel. The court then sentenced

 Martinez-Rios to fifty-seven months for the unlawful entry and eight months

 for the violation; it also recommended that the government “begin removal

 proceedings during the service of sentence.” Id. at 36-37. The government

 heeded that advice and deported Martinez-Rios.

       Martinez-Rios appealed his dual sentences. His appellate counsel filed a

 brief under Anders, 386 U.S. 738, in which counsel asserted that no

 non-frivolous grounds for appeal existed. Counsel contended that

 Martinez-Rios’s guilty plea was valid and that only frivolous arguments

 undermined the convictions and sentences. In response, Martinez-Rios filed a

 letter, in which he suggested that his guilty plea to the 2021 unlawful entry may

 have been invalid. For that, he claimed that he signed a guilty plea that

 stipulated to a thirty-to-thirty-seven-month sentence but then had to re-sign

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Appellate Case: 22-2067   Document: 010110804197     Date Filed: 01/26/2023     Page: 4

 another plea without that stipulation. Martinez-Rios does not attack the validity

 of the operative guilty plea or assert that he received deficient plea advice from

 counsel. To the contrary, he admitted he “made many mistakes” that he

 “regret[s]” and is “paying for.” Appellant’s Translated Resp. 1.

                                  DISCUSSION

       Martinez-Rios’s counsel filed an Anders brief. We analyze those briefs as

 follows:

       Under Anders, counsel must submit a brief to the client and the
       appellate court indicating any potential appealable issues based on
       the record. The client may then choose to submit arguments to the
       court. The Court must then conduct a full examination of the record
       to determine whether defendant’s claims are wholly frivolous. If the
       court concludes after such an examination that the appeal is
       frivolous, it may grant counsel’s motion to withdraw and may
       dismiss the appeal.

 United States v. Calderon, 428 F.3d 928, 930 (10th Cir. 2005) (citing Anders,

 386 U.S. at 744). As mentioned, counsel identified no non-frivolous grounds to

 attack Martinez-Rios’s guilty plea and sentences. And Martinez-Rios’s

 response also identified no non-frivolous grounds to attack his guilty plea.

       We have thoroughly examined the record and agree with counsel that

 only frivolous grounds exist for both appeals. Martinez-Rios pled

 unconditionally guilty to unlawful entry, and he offers no reason to undercut

 the validity of that plea. See Class v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 798, 805 (2018)

 (“[A] valid guilty plea relinquishes any claim that would contradict the

 admissions necessarily made upon entry of a voluntary plea of guilty.” (citation

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Appellate Case: 22-2067   Document: 010110804197    Date Filed: 01/26/2023   Page: 5

 and internal quotation marks omitted)). Nor do we see any reason that the

 district court erred in sentencing Martinez-Rios. In fact, Martinez-Rios faced a

 twenty-year statutory maximum for unlawfully entering the United States and a

 two-year maximum sentence for violating his supervised release. See 8 U.S.C.

 § 1326(b)(2); 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3). The district court chose lighter sentences

 for both offenses, even though Martinez-Rios had an extensive criminal history.

 And in all events, the district court recommended deporting Martinez-Rios

 during his sentence, meaning he likely would not have served a full term of

 incarceration in the United States whatever the sentence may have been.

                                 CONCLUSION

       We agree with Martinez-Rios’s counsel that no non-frivolous grounds for

 an appeal exist. We thus grant counsel’s motion to withdraw, and we dismiss

 these appeals.

                                         Entered for the Court

                                         Gregory A. Phillips
                                         Circuit Judge

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