Court Opinion

ID: 9388547
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-04-20 21:00:33.118682+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:18:20.729669
License: Public Domain

Not for Publication in West's Federal Reporter

          United States Court of Appeals
                      For the First Circuit

No. 22-1681

                    UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

                               Appellee,

                                    v.

                    JULIÁN G. RIVERA-BERRÍOS,

                       Defendant, Appellant.

          APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
                FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO

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

                                 Before

                      Barron, Chief Judge,
              Selya and Thompson, Circuit Judges.

     José David Rodríguez, Research and Writing Specialist, with
whom Eric Alexander Vos, Federal Public Defender, and Franco L.
Pérez-Redondo, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Supervisor,
Appeals Section, were on brief, for appellant.
     Thomas F. Klumper, Assistant United States Attorney, with
whom W. Stephen Muldrow, United States Attorney, and Mariana E.
Bauzá-Almonte, Assistant United States Attorney, Chief, Appellate
Division, were on brief, for appellee.
April 20, 2023
           SELYA, Circuit Judge.            Defendant-appellant Julián G.

Rivera-Berríos appeals from the imposition of a nine-month term of

immurement following the revocation of his term of supervised

release.    We summarily affirm.

           We need not tarry.          We review revocation sentences for

abuse of discretion, see United States v. Gallo, 20 F.3d 7, 13

(1st Cir. 1994); see also United States v. Márquez-García, 862

F.3d 143, 145 (1st Cir. 2017); United States v. Soto-Soto, 855

F.3d 445, 448 (1st Cir. 2017), and we discern none here.

           The appellant's attack on his revocation sentence is

narrowly focused.       At sentencing, the appellant proffered — for

the first time — a claim of recent employment.             According to the

appellant, the district court "found the employment was a sham"

and   "[a]s   such,     the    court     transformed   a   mitigating    fact

(employment) into an aggravating circumstance."             This misguided

outlook, the appellant says, infected the whole of the sentencing

proceeding and irrevocably tainted the court's resolution of the

matter.    But the sentencing record tells a different tale.

           The court's bench decision, revoking the appellant's

term of supervised release and imposing the challenged sentence,

is emblematic.    The court began by briefly mentioning the unsigned

"employment letter" that the appellant first presented at the

revocation hearing.      The court stated that this document had been

tendered    "on   the   very    last     minute,"   that   it   was   "highly

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convenient," and that it was not "good evidence."       The court,

therefore, declined to credit the evidence in mitigation, and that

decision was well within the encincture of the court's discretion.

Cf. United States v. Cintrón-Echautegui, 604 F.3d 1, 6 (1st Cir.

2010) (concluding that "sentencing court has wide discretion to

decide whether particular evidence is sufficiently reliable to be

used at sentencing").

          Having supportably set aside the last-minute attempt at

mitigation, the court went on to explain the key elements of its

sentencing determination.   The court noted that the appellant had

consistently displayed a lack of cooperation with the probation

officer, highlighting attempts to reach him in which "the Probation

Officer was calling and calling and calling and still [received]

no responses."   The court then noted that the appellant had failed

to meet reporting requirements, despite being "told personally

when to report and when to call."      So, the court found, "the

pattern is there . . . [—] not accepting responsibility."      The

court ended this portion of its assessment by concluding that "the

Probation Officer has stretched this to the extent that [she] can."

          Next, the court noted that the appellant — while on

supervised release — had failed no fewer than four substance-abuse

tests.   Moreover, he had racked up approximately 145 "failure to

call" violations.   As to these violations, the court commented:

"[t]here's no excuse and there's no justification."

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            As a capstone, the court found that the appellant "has

not been honest towards the Probation Officer nor the supervision

process."   Consequently, "[h]e has engaged in conduct that clearly

justifies the revocation."      The court proceeded to revoke the

appellant's supervised release.     It then determined the advisory

guideline sentencing range to be three months to nine months.   See

USSG §7B1.4.   Wrapping up, the court observed that the appellant's

            failure to report to the drug rehabilitation
            treatment, to respond in a timely fashion to
            the Probation Officer, his lack of commitment
            and rejection of treatment certainly denotes
            that this individual is not interested in
            complying    with   his . . . conditions    of
            supervision.    A Grade C violation has been
            established by the guidelines and accordingly
            taking into consideration all [18 U.S.C. §]
            3553 factors [and] the arguments of the
            parties, it is the judgement of the Court that
            Mr. Rivera Berrios is committed to the custody
            of the Bureau of Prisons to be imprisoned for
            a term of nine months to be followed by one
            year of supervised release.

            In this venue, the appellant does not challenge either

the revocation order or the district court's calculation of the

advisory guideline sentencing range. He challenges only the length

of the sentence imposed. That challenge fails: the district court

articulated a plausible sentencing rationale and imposed a within-

guidelines sentence that — considering the appellant's persistent

noncompliance with the conditions of his supervised release —

clearly represented a defensible result.      No more was exigible.

See, e.g., United States v. Daoust, 888 F.3d 571, 578 (1st Cir.

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2018); Márquez-García, 862 F.3d at 148; Soto-Soto, 855 F.3d at

451.

            We   need   go   no   further.   A   thorough   review   of   the

sentencing record reveals no sign of any impermissible taint, and

we discern no abuse of discretion in the district court's choice

of a nine-month incarcerative sentence. For the reasons elucidated

above, the challenged sentence is summarily

Affirmed.    See 1st Cir. R. 27.0(c).

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