United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit

No. 23-1194

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Appellee,

v.

EDGAR CENTARICZKI,

Defendant, Appellant.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MAINE

[Hon. Lance E. Walker, U.S. District Judge]

Before

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

Charles W. Rankin and Rankin & Sultan on brief for appellant. Darcie N. McElwee, United States Attorney, and Brian S. Kleinbord, Assistant United States Attorney, on brief for appellee.

April 15, 2024 SELYA, Circuit Judge. Defendant-appellant Edgar

Centariczki challenges the upwardly variant sentence that followed

the revocation of his supervised release. He argues that his

sentence is substantively unreasonable because the district court

lacked a sufficiently plausible rationale for imposing an

above-guidelines sentence. Concluding that the appellant's

eighteen-month sentence was adequately explained and supported by

the record, we affirm.

I

We briefly rehearse the relevant facts and travel of the

case. In February of 2021, the appellant pleaded guilty in the

District of New Hampshire to aiding and abetting the distribution

of methamphetamine and fentanyl. See

(a)(1),

(b)(1)(C);

(a). He received a sentence of time served

(two days) followed by three years of supervised release, which

commenced in June of 2021. Jurisdiction over his case was

subsequently transferred to the District of Maine, where the

appellant was residing.

Between June and October of 2021, the appellant tested

positive several times for marijuana and cocaine. He also missed

several appointments at the U.S. probation office in Portland,

Maine. He attributed these absences variously to conflicts with

his work schedule, forgetfulness, sleeping in, and not having money

for gas to travel to Portland. During this interval, he

- 2 - participated in a substance abuse evaluation and enrolled in an

intensive outpatient treatment program.

To address the myriad violations of the appellant's

supervised release conditions, the probation officer requested a

compliance hearing, which the district court held on October 19,

2021. At the compliance hearing, the court warned the appellant

that he would likely face revocation if he continued to violate

the terms of his supervised release.

Later that month, the appellant again tested positive

for marijuana and cocaine and admitted to using those substances.

The probation office subsequently filed a petition for a warrant,

alleging that the appellant abridged his conditions of supervised

release. The appellant was arrested on November 3.

On January 10, 2022, the district court held a revocation

hearing premised on multiple violations to which the appellant

admitted. These included violations for drug and alcohol use and

failures to report to probation office appointments. Because the

appellant was in the process of being evaluated for admission into

an in-patient substance use disorder treatment facility, the

parties agreed to continue the sentencing portion of the revocation

hearing.

At the time of the continued hearing on May 24, the

appellant had completed in-patient treatment and was living in a

sober house (Enso). The district court adopted the government's

- 3 - recommendation of a time-served sentence (ninety-nine days)

followed by thirty-two months of supervised release.

During the next few months, the appellant continued

receiving treatment for substance abuse as well as mental health

counseling. During this interim, he consistently tested negative

for illicit substances. He also began working with at-risk youth

at a nonprofit organization in Maine, where his supervisor reported

that he was performing well.

At the beginning of September, Enso staff discovered

that the appellant was involved in an unauthorized romantic

relationship with another Enso client, Candida Dephilippo — a

practice that was against the program's rules. The appellant was

informed that he would be discharged from the program if he

continued the relationship. A few days later, he was discharged

from the program for continuing the relationship.

Near the end of September, the appellant's probation

officer referred him for a substance use disorder assessment at

the counseling center from which the appellant previously had

received mental health treatment. The appellant also tested

positive for cocaine, which he later admitted to using. He

completed the substance use disorder assessment and was

recommended as a candidate for weekly treatment, but he missed his

first appointment and never rescheduled it.

- 4 - After his discharge from Enso, the appellant reported to

his probation officer that he would temporarily reside at his place

of employment, which had a residential facility. In October,

however, the probation officer learned that the appellant was

actually residing with Dephilippo in Augusta, Maine. According to

the terms of the appellant's supervised release, he was required

to seek permission to have contact with Dephilippo because she was

a known felon. He never sought such permission, and his probation

officer instructed him to cease contact with her.

Later that month, though, the appellant admitted to his

probation officer that he was still living with Dephilippo, who

was pregnant with his child. Due to Dephilippo's pregnancy, the

probation officer granted the appellant permission to reside with

Dephilippo, with the caveat that permission to have contact with

her would be retracted if he resumed using illicit substances.

In November and December, the appellant tested positive

for cocaine twice. Due to the appellant's continued use of

cocaine, his probation officer instructed him to stop living with

Dephilippo. Toward the end of December, the appellant tested

positive again for cocaine, which he admitted to using, and

informed his probation officer that he had not yet found

alternative housing. The probation officer advised him that a

petition for a summons would be filed to address these violations

- 5 - and that continued use of illicit substances would result in a

petition for a warrant being filed instead of a summons.

On January 15, 2023, the Augusta Police Department

informed the appellant's probation officer that he had been

arrested on charges of domestic violence and obstructing reporting

of a crime. The arrest report alleged that after Dephilippo

confronted the appellant about spending their household money on

drugs, he repeatedly struck her in the face, stuck his fingers in

her mouth, and pulled her hair when she tried to leave. According

to the report, Dephilippo then convinced the appellant to take her

to the hospital, where she passed a note to medical providers

stating that he had assaulted her. The appellant later admitted

to police that he had slapped her in the face.

Shortly thereafter, the probation office filed a

petition to revoke the appellant's term of supervised release,

alleging three violations of his supervised release terms: his

testing positive for cocaine four times between September and

December of 2022; his failure to relocate after his probation

officer instructed him to move out of Dephilippo's home; and his

assault on Dephilippo. On February 27, 2023, the district court

held a final revocation hearing. The appellant admitted to all

the charged violations, and the district court calculated a

guideline sentencing range (GSR) of four to ten months, with thirty

months of supervised release.

- 6 - The government advocated for an above-guidelines

sentence of eighteen months' incarceration with no supervised

release to follow. The government argued that an upwardly variant

sentence was appropriate because the appellant had received

multiple "breaks" in the form of time-served sentences and chances

to seek drug treatment, and yet he continued to use drugs and

violate the terms of his probation. An eighteen-month sentence,

the government argued, would serve the goal of specific deterrence.

The appellant urged a sentence of eight months. His

attorney explained that the appellant's low IQ and impulsivity

disorder made it unrealistic to "expect[] [from him] the kind of

normalcy and compliance" that would typically be expected from an

adult of his age (twenty-nine years old at the time of the

hearing). The appellant's attorney also alleged that the

appellant's assault on Dephilippo stemmed from the appellant's

dismay over her use of heroin while pregnant.

In handing down the sentence, the district court stated

that the probation office had exercised "Job-like patience" with

the appellant and that "one of the only tools . . . that has not

been tried, is prison for punishment's sake," which would

"hopefully deter [the appellant] from a lifetime of this

groundhog-day saga wherein [he] repeat[s] the same harmful conduct

on a loop unabated and in the face of generous opportunities that

many scores of federal defendants do not see." The district court

- 7 - acknowledged "the particular challenges" that the appellant faced

but "reject[ed] . . . any qualitative parsing of the nature of the

assault" on Dephilippo. The court stated that it had "considered

the 3553(a) factors, chief among them . . . the need to impose a

sentence that corresponds to the seriousness of the offense, to

provide just punishment for the offense, to protect the public

from further crimes . . . , and to hopefully afford some measure

of specific deterrence."

In the end, the district court sentenced the appellant

to eighteen months' incarceration with no supervised release to

follow. This timely appeal ensued.

II

The appellant contends that his sentence was

"substantively unreasonable because the district judge failed to

explain why an upward variant was necessary or appropriate."

Although the parties dispute whether the appellant's contention

should be reviewed for abuse of discretion or for plain error, we

leave that question unresolved because — under either standard of

review — the government prevails. Favorably to the appellant, we

review for abuse of discretion. See United States v. Bermúdez-

Meléndez,

(1st Cir. 2016).

The test for the substantive reasonableness of a

sentence is whether it "reflects 'a plausible sentencing rationale

and a defensible result.'" United States v. Soto-Soto, 855 F.3d

- 8 - 445, 450 (1st Cir. 2017) (quoting United States v. Martin,

(1st Cir. 2008)). Where, as here, a sentence is

imposed following the revocation of a term of supervised release,

(e) guides the district court's exercise of

discretion. See

Section 3583 counsels the court to consider sentencing

factors such as the nature of the offense, the offender's history

and characteristics, the need for deterrence, and the need to

protect the public. See

(e) (incorporating by

reference several of the sentencing factors outlined in

(a)). An upwardly variant sentence will generally be upheld

if it "is anchored in a plausible, albeit not inevitable, view of

the circumstances sufficient to distinguish th[e] case from the

mine-run of cases." United States v. Del Valle-Rodríguez,

(1st Cir. 2014).

Because the appellant only attacks the district court's

explanation of its sentence and does not appear separately to argue

that the outcome would be unreasonable regardless of its rationale,

we focus on the "plausible sentencing rationale" element of the

test for substantive reasonableness.1 Soto-Soto, 855 F.3d at 450;

1As we have observed, "an adequate explanation for an upward variance and a plausible rationale for that variance are almost always two sides of the same coin." United States v. Valle-Colón,

, 50 (1st Cir. 2021); see United States v. Leach,

, 198 (1st Cir. 2023).

- 9 - see United States v. Flores-Nater,

, 656-57 (1st Cir.

2023). We hold that the district court's rationale was plausible

and its sentence was reasonable.

First, we disagree with the appellant's characterization

of the district court's rationale as "merely list[ing] a variety

of factors that it considered . . . without explaining its reason

for selecting an upward variant." The district court clearly

explained that, considering such things as the appellant's

repeated violations of his supervised release terms and the

multiple second chances afforded to him by the court and probation

officer, an above-guidelines sentence was needed to "hopefully

deter [him] from a lifetime of . . . repeat[ing] the same harmful

conduct." We upheld an upwardly variant sentence premised on a

similar rationale in Soto-Soto, another case in which an

appellant's supervised release was revoked after repeated

violations, including an incident in which he was charged with

domestic violence. See 855 F.3d at 446-47, 451.

There, the court calculated a guideline range of five to

eleven months and sentenced the appellant to two years'

imprisonment (the statutory maximum). See id. at 448. In response

to the appellant's claim of substantive unreasonableness, we

explained that "the appellant's actions gave the district court

ample reason to believe that only a substantial sentence would

deter him from his wayward practices" and noted that "a high-end

- 10 - guideline sentence would in all likelihood have carried with it a

new supervised release term . . . and the appellant had given the

court reason to believe that a new term of supervised release would

be fruitless." Id. at 450-51. Here, as in Soto-Soto, the

persistence of the appellant's previous supervised release

violations was sufficient to "distinguish this case from the

mine-run of cases." Del Valle-Rodríguez,

.

What is more, the appellant is incorrect in asserting

that the district court "failed to explain why a guideline

sentence . . . would not be adequate," as the district court

highlighted the prior opportunities and leniency the appellant had

received as well as his repeated supervised release violations and

its evaluation of the need for specific deterrence.

Furthermore, this case is distinguishable from the two

cases that the appellant primarily cites as instructive examples

of upwardly variant revocation sentences that were imposed without

sufficient rationale. United States v. Reyes-Correa,

,

11-12 (1st Cir. 2023); United States v. Serrano-Berríos,

, 250 (1st Cir. 2022). In Reyes-Correa, the district court

supplied only "boilerplate language" to explain its 400 percent

upwardly variant sentence and, when describing the factors

relevant to the appellant's sentence, gave "a 'mere listing of the

facts . . . , without emphasis on any particular circumstance,'"

making it "'impossible to tell' why the court landed on a sentence

- 11 - that quadrupled the guidelines sentencing range." 81 F.4th at

10-11 (alteration in original) (quoting United States v. Muñoz-

Fontanez,

, 214 (1st Cir. 2023)). Moreover, we were

unable to identify any circumstance that made the appellant's

situation more egregious than simply a "case . . . about a person

who is living with a substance use disorder."

. In

Serrano-Berríos, we found the sentencing rationale insufficient in

part because the district court's explanation was unclear and

subject to multiple interpretations, one of which would have been

unsupported by the record. See 38 F.4th at 250.

Here, the district court's explanation of the

appellant's sentence was unambiguous and consistent with the

record. The district court emphasized the repetitiveness of the

appellant's previous violations, the multiple second chances

already provided to him, and the egregiousness of his latest

violation for domestic violence as the main bases for the upward

variance. Unlike Reyes-Correa, this is not a case in which it

could plausibly be argued that there was little basis for an upward

variance apart from conduct that could be considered par for the

course for a person with a substance use disorder. See 81 F.4th

at 13. Most notably, the appellant admitted to hitting Dephilippo,

who was pregnant. The variance imposed here was also significantly

less severe than the 400 percent increase at issue in Reyes-Correa.

See id. at 10; see also United States v. Guzman-Fernandez, 824

- 12 - F.3d 173, 178 (1st Cir. 2016) ("[T]he greater the variance, 'the

more compelling the sentencing court's justification must be.'"

(quoting Del Valle-Rodríguez,

)). For a variance

of this extent, the district court's explanation was sufficient.

III

We need go no further. For the reasons elucidated above,

the district court's sentence is

Affirmed.

- 13 -