Court Opinion

ID: 9804620
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 17:01:02.436023+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:44:10.734371
License: Public Domain

FOR PUBLICATION

     UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
          FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,                         No. 22-50112

                 Plaintiff-Appellee,                D.C. No.
    v.                                           3:22-cr-00224-
                                                     LAB-1
URBANO TORRES-GILES,

                 Defendant-Appellant.               OPINION

         Appeal from the United States District Court
           for the Southern District of California
          Larry A. Burns, District Judge, Presiding

             Argued and Submitted July 13, 2023
                    Pasadena, California

                     Filed August 31, 2023

    Before: Gabriel P. Sanchez and Salvador Mendoza, Jr.,
     Circuit Judges, and Brian A. Jackson, * District Judge.

                  Opinion by Judge Sanchez;
          Partial Concurrence and Partial Dissent by
                     Judge Mendoza, Jr.

*
 The Honorable Brian A. Jackson, United States District Judge for the
Middle District of Louisiana, sitting by designation.
2                      USA V. TORRES-GILES

                          SUMMARY **

                          Criminal Law

    The panel affirmed a sentence in a case in which Urbano
Torres-Giles pleaded guilty to attempted reentry following
removal and entered a Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure
11(c)(1)(B) plea agreement, known as a “Type B”
agreement.
    Torres-Giles argued that the district court abused its
discretion by “rejecting” his Type B plea agreement in its
entirety after imposing sentence for the reentry offense. The
panel explained that unlike plea agreements under Federal
Rules of Criminal Procedure 11(c)(1)(A) and (c)(1)(C), no
corresponding opportunity-to-withdraw language governs
Type B plea agreements; the defendant has no right to
withdraw a Type B plea if the court does not follow the
government’s recommendation or the defendant’s request,
and a Type B agreement is not binding upon the court. The
panel held that so long as the defendant is apprised of the
consequences of entering into a Type B plea agreement and
accedes to them voluntarily, he has no right to withdraw
from the agreement on the ground that the court does not
accept       the     sentencing      recommendation        or
request. Accordingly, the district court’s use of the word
“reject” in the context of a Type B plea agreement can have
no legal effect. The panel wrote that the record establishes
that Torres-Giles was aware of the consequences of entering
into a Type B plea agreement, and concluded that the district

**
  This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has
been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.
                     USA V. TORRES-GILES                      3

court therefore did not abuse its discretion under the
circumstances.
    The same district court judge who sentenced Torres-
Giles in this case had presided over his prior sentencing
hearing for illegal reentry. Torres-Giles argued that the
district court committed procedural error when it used
Torres-Giles’s alleged promise at his prior sentencing
hearing not to return to the United States as a sentencing
factor for the attempted reentry offense without any proof
such a promise had been made. Reviewing for plain error,
the panel held that the district court’s factual finding that
Torres-Giles had assured the court at the prior sentencing
hearing that he would not return to the United States is
supported by the record. In addition, the record establishes
that the broken promise played virtually no role in the district
court’s sentence for the attempted reentry offense. And even
if the district court procedurally erred by relying on the
promise, Torres-Giles did not demonstrate that his
substantial rights were affected.
    Judge Mendoza concurred in part and dissented in
part. He dissented from the part of the majority opinion
concerning the district court’s finding of a broken promise.
    Applying United States v. Burgos-Ortega, 777 F.3d
1047 (9th Cir. 2015), which he reads as suggesting correctly
that a district court’s speculation about statements
potentially made during a prior hearing is a “clearly
erroneous fact” that cannot be used as a sentencing factor,
and reviewing for plain error, he would reverse.
4                   USA V. TORRES-GILES

                        COUNSEL

Adam F. Doyle (argued), Law Office of Adam F. Doyle, San
Diego, California, for Defendant-Appellant.
David E. Fawcett (argued), Assistant United States
Attorney; Daniel E. Zipp, Assistant United States Attorney,
Appellate Section Chief, Criminal Division; Rand S.
Grossman, United States Attorney; United States Attorney’s
Office, San Diego, California; Mikaela Weber, Solomon
Ward Seidenwurm & Smith LLP, San Diego, California; for
Plaintiff-Appellee.

                        OPINION

SANCHEZ, Circuit Judge:

    Urbano Torres-Giles appeals his sentence of twenty-
seven months’ imprisonment followed by three years’
supervised release for attempted reentry following removal
in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326. At the time of his attempted
reentry, Torres-Giles had been deported from the United
States six times, most recently about a month before his
arrest. The same district court judge who sentenced Torres-
Giles in this case had presided over his prior sentencing
hearing for illegal reentry.
    On appeal, Torres-Giles raises two challenges to the
court’s sentence. First, he contends that the district court
abused its discretion by rejecting his Federal Rule of
Criminal Procedure 11(c)(1)(B) plea agreement in its
entirety after imposing sentence for the reentry offense.
Second, Torres-Giles argues that the district court erred by
                        USA V. TORRES-GILES                            5

considering an alleged assurance he made at his prior
sentencing hearing that he would not return to the United
States. We affirm.
                                   I.
    Torres-Giles is a native and citizen of Mexico with a
substantial criminal immigration history. He was convicted
of illegal reentry and deported six times. In 2009, he was
convicted of illegal reentry and deported in April 2010 after
serving a six-month sentence. He was arrested again two
weeks later, convicted of illegal reentry, and served a 90-day
sentence.      In 2018, Torres-Giles was detained by
immigration officials following his arrest for a domestic
violence incident. 1 He was convicted of illegal reentry and
sentenced in 2019 to a six-month term. 2 He was arrested
again in 2019 for illegal reentry and sentenced to a twenty-
one-month term in the Southern District of California.
Torres-Giles was deported in December 2021. He remained
in Tijuana, Mexico for approximately one month before he
attempted to reenter the United States and was arrested
again.
    When Torres-Giles was arrested on January 10, 2022, for
the present offense, he was on supervised release from the
two prior criminal immigration cases. The government filed
a one-count information charging Torres-Giles with
attempted reentry of a removed alien in violation of § 1326,
along with notice relating it to the two prior cases with

1
  Torres-Giles was also convicted in the United States of felony
aggravated assault in 2005, misdemeanor domestic violence in 2009, and
driving under the influence in 2004 and 2017.
2
 This case originally proceeded in the Central District of California but
was transferred to the Southern District of California.
6                   USA V. TORRES-GILES

pending terms of supervised release. The case was
transferred to the same district court judge who had presided
over Torres-Giles’s prior cases.
    Torres-Giles entered a Rule 11(c)(1)(B) plea agreement,
known as a “Type B” agreement, setting forth a global
resolution for the three cases. The plea agreement proposed
fast-track departure for the most recent § 1326 reentry
offense. When Torres-Giles appeared for his entry of guilty
plea, the magistrate judge completed a Rule 11 colloquy
advising Torres-Giles that his plea agreement was not
binding on the district court and that he could be sentenced
to a higher or lower sentence than the recommendation in the
plea agreement. Torres-Giles stated that he understood.
    At the sentencing hearing, the district court began with
Torres-Giles’s most recent offense of attempted reentry.
The court confirmed with defense counsel that Torres-Giles
had appeared before him at the last sentencing hearing and
then asked whether counsel had reviewed the sentencing
transcript from the previous hearing. The following
exchange transpired:

       DEFENSE COUNSEL: I did not take a look
       at the transcript, but I certainly remember
       most of it.
       THE COURT: What did he tell me about
       whether he would remain out of the United
       States? Because he had been convicted
       multiple times of coming into the United
       States illegally before he was sentenced last
       time. What do you recall him telling me
       about whether he would remain out?
                    USA V. TORRES-GILES                    7

       DEFENSE COUNSEL: I believe the Court
       inquired as to that, and Mr. Torres said that -
       - I don’t know his exact words, but he would
       certainly do his best to remain out of the
       country.
       THE COURT: Right. And his mother’s
       condition, as you point out, was kind of front
       and center even then, right?
       DEFENSE COUNSEL: That is correct, Your
       Honor.
       THE COURT: So that was known, that was
       discussed, and I sought from him an
       assurance that he would stay out, and he gave
       me that assurance?
       DEFENSE        COUNSEL:       That’s     my
       recollection. I don’t have the transcript in
       front of me.

The court observed that Torres-Giles had been convicted of
several violent felonies, including an assault with a deadly
weapon, another violent offense that involved kicking
someone in the head, and a domestic violence conviction,
and had a significant criminal immigration history, including
six deportations.
    After Torres-Giles allocuted, promising that he would
“never set foot again in this country,” the court asked him
whether he remembered making a prior promise not to
return: “[D]o you remember telling me words to that effect
last time, that you would not come back again? Do you
remember saying that to me when you were here before in
2019?” Torres-Giles stated he did not.
8                    USA V. TORRES-GILES

    After hearing argument from counsel, the court rejected
the parties’ joint recommendation for fast-track departure.
The court discussed the sentencing factors under 18 U.S.C.
§ 3553(a), including the nature of the offense, Torres-Giles’s
history and characteristics, and the need for deterrence and
to promote respect for the law. The court sentenced Torres-
Giles to the upper-end of the guideline range, twenty-seven
months.
    The parties informed the court that Torres-Giles’s plea
agreement included a right of appeal should the court reject
fast-track departure. The court stated that if the plea
agreement depended on the court going along with a fast-
track concession it believed to be unjustified, it rejected the
plea agreement. Defense counsel asked for clarification:
“are you rejecting the plea agreement in its entirety or just
declining to impose the fast-track departure?” The court
stated: “I’m not going to put my imprimatur on an agreement
like that. . . . I reject the plea agreement.”
    The court then turned to the two supervised release cases
and found that Torres-Giles violated the conditions that he
not return to the United States or violate the laws of the
United States. The court noted that in this context, it was
permitted to consider the nature of the breach of the trust
which it found was explicit and clear. The court stated that
when Torres-Giles was sentenced in May 2020, the court
said, “don’t come back anymore,” and “you then promised
me, according to your lawyer, that you wouldn’t come back
again, and yet what? A month and a half of getting out of jail
for that, you came right back.” Torres-Giles repeated that he
appeared on video but was not able to speak to the court at
that hearing. The court stated that was not true because his
lawyer remembered otherwise, and the court would not have
                     USA V. TORRES-GILES                      9

gone forward with sentencing if Torres-Giles had not been
able to say anything.
    In light of Torres-Giles’s attempt to reenter so soon after
his most recent deportation as well as breaking his promise
that he would not return, the court imposed a consecutive
twenty-four-month term for his more recent supervised
release case, and a sentence of time-served in the older
supervised release case. Torres-Giles was thus sentenced to
an aggregate term of fifty-one months. This timely appeal
followed.
                              II.
    We review a district court’s sentencing decision for
abuse of discretion. United States v. Brown, 42 F.4th 1142,
1145 (9th Cir. 2022); see also United States v. Carty, 520
F.3d 984, 993 (9th Cir. 2008) (en banc). Plain error review,
however, applies to unpreserved claims of procedural error.
United States v. Ferguson, 8 F.4th 1143, 1145 (9th Cir.
2021); see also United States v. Quintero-Junco, 754 F.3d
746, 749 (9th Cir. 2014). “To establish plain error, a
defendant must show ‘(1) error, (2) that is plain, (3) that
affected substantial rights, and (4) that seriously affected the
fairness, integrity or public reputation of the judicial
proceedings.’” Ferguson, 8 F.4th at 1145–46 (quoting
United States v. Borowy, 595 F.3d 1045, 1049 (9th Cir.
2010)).
    Torres-Giles first contends the district court abused its
discretion by “rejecting” the plea agreement in its entirety
after imposing sentence for the reentry offense. We disagree
because the court’s “rejection” of a Type B plea agreement
does not transform it into a binding agreement or otherwise
allow the defendant to withdraw from the plea.
10                   USA V. TORRES-GILES

     We recently held that a district court’s purported
“rejection” of a Type B plea agreement at sentencing had no
legal effect. See United States v. Montoya, 48 F.4th 1028,
1033–34 (9th Cir. 2022), vacated for reh’g en banc on other
grounds, 54 F.4th 1168 (9th Cir. 2022). A close review of
the text of Rule 11 supports this conclusion. Rule
11(c)(1)(A) and (c)(1)(C) require the court to “give the
defendant an opportunity to withdraw the plea” if the court
rejects a plea agreement entered under these provisions.
Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(c)(5)(B). But no corresponding
opportunity-to-withdraw language governs Type B plea
agreements. See id. Rather, the text of Rule 11(c)(1)(B)
provides that if the defendant pleads guilty, the government
will “recommend, or agree not to oppose the defendant’s
request, that a particular sentence or sentencing range is
appropriate or that a particular provision of the Sentencing
Guidelines, or policy statement, or sentencing factor does or
does not apply,” though “such a recommendation or request
does not bind the court.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(c)(1)(B).
“[T]he defendant has no right to withdraw the [Type B] plea
if the court does not follow the recommendation or request.”
Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(c)(3)(B); see also Fed. R. Crim. P. 11
advisory committee’s note to 1979 amendment (providing
that a Type B agreement is “clearly of a different order” than
the Type A or C agreement as a Type B plea is an “agreement
to recommend” that “is discharged when the prosecutor
performs as he agreed to do” and is “not binding upon the
court”).
    “Traditional canons of statutory construction suggest
that this omission was meaningful.” Briseno v. ConAgra
Foods, Inc., 844 F.3d 1121, 1125 (9th Cir. 2017). We
presume that the Rules drafters acted “intentionally and
purposely” by omitting the right to withdraw only from Type
                    USA V. TORRES-GILES                   11

B agreements. Russello v. United States, 464 U.S. 16, 23
(1983). So long as the defendant is fairly apprised of the
consequences of entering into a Type B plea agreement and
accedes to them voluntarily, he has no right to withdraw
from the agreement on the ground that the court does not
accept the sentencing recommendation or request. Fed. R.
Crim. P. 11(c)(3)(B). Accordingly, the district court’s use
of the word “reject” in the context of a Type B plea
agreement can have no legal effect.
    The record establishes that Torres-Giles was aware of the
consequences of entering into a Type B plea agreement. In
his Rule 11 colloquy before the magistrate judge, Torres-
Giles acknowledged that his Type B agreement was non-
binding and that the district court judge could sentence him
to a higher or lower sentence than the one in the plea
agreement. The plea agreement that he signed also stated the
court was free to reject the sentencing recommendation.
That the district court purportedly “rejected” the plea
agreement cannot transform his non-binding Type B plea
agreement into a binding Type A or Type C plea agreement.
We conclude that the district court did not abuse its
discretion under the circumstances.
                            III.
    Torres-Giles next argues the district court committed
procedural error when it used his alleged promise not to
return to the United States as a sentencing factor for the
§ 1326 reentry offense without any proof such a promise had
been made. Because Torres-Giles did not raise this
procedural objection in the district court, we review it for
12                    USA V. TORRES-GILES

plain error. Ferguson, 8 F.4th at 1145. 3 We conclude that
Torres-Giles has not established any error by the district
court, much less error that affected his substantial rights.
    A district court procedurally errs at sentencing if it
imposes a sentence based on “clearly erroneous facts.”
United States v. Burgos-Ortega, 777 F.3d 1047, 1056 (9th
Cir. 2015) (quoting Carty, 520 F.3d at 993)). A finding is
clearly erroneous if it is illogical, implausible, or without
support in the record.” Id. (quoting United States v. Graf,
610 F.3d 1148, 1157 (9th Cir. 2010)). The district court’s
finding that Torres-Giles had assured the court at his May
2020 sentencing hearing that he would not return to the
United States is supported by the record.
    Defense counsel confirmed his client’s promise not to
return to the United States. Specifically, counsel confirmed
that while he had not read the transcript from the prior
sentencing hearing, he “certainly remember[ed] most of it”
and recalled that “Mr. Torres said that—I don’t know his
exact words, but he would certainly do his best to remain out
of the country.” Defense counsel’s recollection aligned with
the district court’s own recollection of what occurred at the
hearing. The district court judge also explained his practice
of allowing defendants to speak at sentencing and rejected
Torres-Giles’s assertion that he was not given the
opportunity to speak by video. Although Torres-Giles
contends he never made such a promise, he has not presented
a transcript of the prior hearing or otherwise directed this
court to any portion of the record that might support his

3
  Even if we were to review the claim under an abuse of discretion
standard, as Torres-Giles suggests, we would arrive at the same
conclusion and find no abuse of discretion.
                         USA V. TORRES-GILES                            13

claim. Torres-Giles has not demonstrated clear error in the
district court’s finding of a broken promise.
    Our dissenting colleague characterizes the district court
and defense counsel’s recollection of the May 2020 hearing
as “flawed” and “equivocal,” but the record belies these
descriptions. Even without a transcript, defense counsel
stated he “certainly remember[ed] most of it,” including that
the defendant had assured the court he would remain outside
the United States, and the district court clearly recalled the
same exchange along with other details from the prior
hearing. Defendant’s bare assertion that he was not allowed
to speak was rejected by the court given its practice of
allowing each defendant to speak at sentencing. This is a
quintessential factual dispute. Our review for clear error
does not permit us to pick and choose who we find more
believable, and the record plainly supports the district
court’s finding that Torres-Giles made such a promise. 4
    The record also establishes that the broken promise
played virtually no role in the district court’s sentence for the
§ 1326 offense. The court discussed at length Torres-Giles’s

4
  The dissent selectively quotes one instance where the district court
judge stated, “I don’t remember exactly,” while omitting the rest of the
sentence: “I don't remember exactly, but I would not have gone forward
if you could not have spoken to me over the video conference because
you have an absolute right to speak at sentencing.”
A fair reading of the transcript does not indicate that the judge was
equivocal in recalling the prior hearing. For example, the court stated at
a later point: “All right. Mr. Torres, you have a right again to speak. The
issue this time is when I sentenced you in May of 2020, two years ago, I
said, ‘Look, don’t come back anymore. Go in peace.’ … You then
promised me, according to your lawyer, that you wouldn’t come back
again, and, yet, what? A month and a half of getting out of jail for that,
you came right back.”
14                      USA V. TORRES-GILES

recidivism, multiple felony convictions, prior violence, and
significant criminal immigration history, emphasizing the
need for deterrence, just punishment, and promoting respect
for the law. After the court pronounced sentence of twenty-
seven months’ custody, the court referenced the broken
promise again, doing so to warn Torres-Giles of the
consequences he would face if he returned to the United
States. 5
    Even if the district court procedurally erred by relying on
the alleged promise, Torres-Giles has not demonstrated that
his substantial rights were affected. He does not challenge
the district court’s reliance on other § 3553(a) sentencing
factors to impose sentence on the § 1326 conviction. At
most, the court’s discussion of a broken promise was nested
within a broader balancing of several sentencing factors that
are amply supported by the record, and Torres-Giles has not
shown that his sentence would have differed had the court
declined to consider his prior statement.
     AFFIRMED.

5
  An extended back-and-forth about the broken promise took place
during the portion of sentencing that addressed the supervised release
cases. Torres-Giles does not challenge the district court’s authority to
consider a breach of trust in determining the appropriate sentence for
violating a term of supervised release.
                         USA V. TORRES-GILES                 15

MENDOZA, Circuit Judge, concurring in part and
dissenting in part:

    The district court imposed a criminal sentence based on
a fact that the defendant disputed, that the court could not
recall, and that was not supported by any evidence in the
record. I thus dissent from Part III of the Court’s opinion.1
Imposing a prison sentence based on guesswork is
unacceptable, especially when the defendant is in the
courtroom saying that the judge has guessed wrong.
                                  I.
    This fact pattern is not new. In United States v. Burgos-
Ortega, 777 F.3d 1047 (9th Cir. 2015), the defendant pled
guilty to attempted reentry in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326.
The parties requested a 24-month sentence based, in part, on
Mr. Burgos-Ortega’s representation that he had no reason to
return to the United States, having reestablished contact with
his children who planned to continue their relationship with
him and visit him in Mexico. Id. at 1050. However, the
district court imposed an above-Guidelines sentence, stating:

            Now I have reviewed this file pretty carefully
            because I knew I was going to vary up. And
            I’ve heard the reasons for coming back into
            the United States. I’d be willing to bet you
            dollars to donuts that if I went and I got a
            transcript of the proceedings of his previous
            1326’s, he probably had a good excuse for
            coming back into the United States. Now I
            don’t have those transcripts. But, you know,
            I do enough of these every Monday, I

1
    I join Parts I–II.
16                   USA V. TORRES-GILES

       probably do more sentencings than many,
       many districts combined. And I hear it all the
       time. There is always, you know, reason to
       come back. They want to be with their family
       or what have you. And the story never
       changes in the sense that they come back.

Id. Defense counsel responded that because Mr. Burgos-
Ortega had satisfied his reason for returning to the United
States—to reunite with his children—he was unlikely to
reoffend. Id. at 1051. The district court dismissed this
argument as “just not very credible.” Id.
    On appeal, Mr. Burgos-Ortega argued that “the district
court improperly speculated that he had offered good reasons
for his prior two illegal re-entries when it rejected Burgos-
Ortega’s contention that he had no reason for returning to the
United States in the future.” Id. at 1056. We rejected that
argument, but not because we condone criminal sentences
based on speculation. Rather, we held “the district court’s
comments played no role in its determination of an
appropriate sentence. The court expressly recognized that it
did not have the transcripts from the earlier hearings before
it and the court stated that, in its view, Burgos-Ortega’s
reasons for an illegal re-entry were irrelevant.” Id. at 1056.
    I read Burgos-Ortega as suggesting, correctly, that a
district court’s speculation about statements potentially
made during a prior hearing is a “clearly erroneous fact” that
cannot be used as a sentencing factor. Id. at 1056. Applying
that rule here, and reviewing for plain error, I would reverse.
                              II.
    The court’s finding of a broken promise is clearly
erroneous because it is “without support in inferences that
                     USA V. TORRES-GILES                   17

may be drawn from the facts in the record.” United States v.
Valle, 940 F.3d 473, 478 (9th Cir. 2019) (emphasis added)
(quoting United States v. Hinkson, 585 F.3d 1247, 1262 (9th
Cir. 2009) (en banc)). Mr. Torres-Giles expressly denied
making the promise or entering “a trust relationship,” as the
judge described it, to which the judge conceded “I don’t
remember exactly.” Yet he doubted Mr. Torres-Giles,
saying:

       I don’t think it’s true. I think you’re
       misrecollecting when you say you didn’t get
       an opportunity to speak or you didn’t say
       anything.      Your lawyer remembers
       otherwise, and my practice would have
       forbidden going forward if you couldn’t have
       communicated with me via video.

Here, as in Burgos-Ortega, the district judge may have had
insights and intuition about Mr. Torres-Giles’s prior
statements, but he did not have the transcripts from the
earlier hearings, nor the confirmed facts. There also is
nothing in the Criminal History Report confirming this
flawed and disputed memory. “A merely speculative logic
cannot displace the need for evidence on such an issue,
which cannot be decided by assumption or inference not
based on fact.” United States v. Jordan, 291 F.3d 1091, 1099
(9th Cir. 2002).
    The majority is wrong to rest on defense counsel’s
equivocal assent to the district judge’s questioning about Mr.
Torres-Giles’s alleged promise. My colleagues say that
defense counsel “certainly remember[ed] most” of the prior
hearing. But that does not mean, and the record does not
show, that he remembered Mr. Torres-Giles making a
18                       USA V. TORRES-GILES

promise and entering “a trust relationship” with the court. 2
In fact, defense counsel told the court “I don’t know his exact
words.” Then, when asked whether his client made an
assurance, he said: “That’s my recollection. I don’t have the
transcript in front of me.” In other words, “I’m not sure.”
Two flawed memories cannot equal a confirmed fact.
    Moreover, the attorney-client relationship “is a
quintessential principal-agent relationship” where “the client
retains ultimate dominion and control over the underlying
claim.” C.I.R. v. Banks, 543 U.S. 426, 436 (2005). Mr.
Torres-Giles exercised that control by correcting his lawyer.
Unlike trial management decisions, which are “the lawyer’s
province,” the decision to admit or deny an aggravating
sentencing factor is of the kind “reserved for the client.”
McCoy v. Louisiana, 138 S. Ct. 1500, 1508 (2018) (noting
the client ultimately decides things like whether to “plead
guilty,” “testify in one’s own behalf,” and “assert
innocence”). The sentencing court should not have relied on
the attorney’s uncertain memory given Mr. Torres-Giles’s
statement that his attorney was wrong; that “I didn’t say
those things.”
    The majority also faults Mr. Torres-Giles for not
presenting a transcript from the prior hearing or other
evidence to support his claim. But that is not his burden. A
sentencing court may not assume an aggravating factor and
require the defendant to disprove it. See United States v.
Flores, 725 F.3d 1028, 1041 (9th Cir. 2013) (noting the

2
  The district judge said he considered the attempted reentry a “breach of
trust” materially different than an ordinary violation of supervised
release, which he did not view as “a trust relationship.” See infra Part
III.
                    USA V. TORRES-GILES                   19

government bears the burden of establishing the factual
underpinnings for imposing a sentencing enhancement).
    The majority says in closing that we may not “pick and
choose who we find more believable.” Agreed, but neither
may the district court when its own memory of events is
foggy. A sentencing court cannot enhance a criminal
sentence through a credibility contest of unsworn
statements; by crediting its own speculation over the
defendant’s version of the facts. A judge’s insights and
intuition are not enough. See Jordan, 291 F.3d at 1098.
Rather, the factual dispute must be resolved on “the facts in
the record.” Valle, 940 F.3d at 478 (quoting Hinkson, 585
F.3d at 1262). This record shows only that between the
judge, the lawyer, and the defendant, just one person was
certain their memory was correct: Mr. Torres-Giles.
                            III.
    The district court’s error affected Mr. Torres-Giles’s
substantial rights because the record shows “a reasonable
probability that, but for the error, the outcome of the
proceeding would have been different.” Rosales-Mireles v.
United States, 138 S. Ct. 1897, 1904–05 (2018) (quoting
Molina-Martinez v. United States, 578 U.S. 189, 194
(2016)). The district judge explained that he viewed Mr.
Torres-Giles’s circumstances as “different” and
“aggravated” because of the broken promise. He said, “I did
think that we had a meeting of the minds when he promised
me that he wouldn’t come back.” He also considered the
attempted reentry a “breach of trust” materially different
than an ordinary violation of supervised release, which he
did not view as “a trust relationship.” Before imposing a
20                    USA V. TORRES-GILES

sentence above the parties’ joint recommendation, the judge
said:

         Mr. Torres, I’m not going to elicit a promise
         from you this time because your word has
         proved not to be really good. You promised
         me last time you wouldn’t come back and,
         yet, you did. But I am going to tell you that
         if you do come back again, I’ll give you a
         promise, you’re going to face a sanction.
         Whatever the government does, you’re going
         to face a sanction on this case if you come
         back in the next three years.

On this record, it is easy to conclude that there is a
“reasonable probability” the court would not have sentenced
Mr. Torres-Giles so harshly—above even the government’s
recommendation—had it not relied on this erroneous fact.
Rosales-Mireles, 138 S. Ct. at 1905.
    We must correct this error. The majority says that “the
broken promise played virtually no role in the district court’s
sentence for the § 1326 offense.” But that, too, is
speculation. We have no way of knowing the extent to
which the erroneous finding affected the sentence.
Regardless, any role is too great. I can think of few things
more damaging to “the fairness, integrity, and public
reputation of judicial proceedings” than imposing a prison
sentence based on a disputed factual finding that has no
support in the record. Id. at 1911.
     I respectfully dissent.