United States v. Rafael Marroquin
Opinion
The opinion previously issued in this case is withdrawn, and the following opinion is substituted in its place:
Rafael Rios Marroquin pleaded guilty to illegal reentry. He was sentenced within the 21 to 27 months Guidelines range to 25 months in prison. That range was based on a criminal history category of V, which applies to the 11 criminal history points assigned to Marroquin. Two of those points were for a North Carolina conviction for a drug offense that occurred in 2005. Another two points were for a North Carolina conviction for violating the same statute in 2006. The North Carolina court had consolidated those two cases into a *300 single judgment and sentenced Marroquin to a single six-to-eight-month sentence.
Marroquin argues that it was error to assign criminal history points for both North Carolina offenses given that they were consolidated into a single judgment. Because he did not raise this objection in the district court, Marroquin must show an error that was plain and that affected his substantial rights.
Puckett v. United States
,
He easily clears the first hurdle. It was error to score the consolidated sentence twice. The North Carolina "Consolidation of Sentences" statute provides that if "an offender is convicted of more than one offense at the same time, the court may consolidate the offenses for judgment and impose a single judgment for the consolidated offenses." N.C. GEN. STAT. ANN. § 15A-1340.15(b). That is what the state court chose to do for Marroquin's two offenses: it consolidated them into a single judgment and imposed a single sentence. Under the Guidelines, which assign criminal history points for "each prior sentence" rather than each offense, that single sentence is assigned one score. U.S.S.G. § 4A1.1 (2014). Straightforward interaction of the North Carolina statute and the Sentencing Guidelines thus demonstrates that the consolidated North Carolina offense should have received a single score. This is also the view of the Fourth Circuit,
see
United States v. Davis
,
The government argues that any error was not obvious, relying on our unpublished decision in
United States v. Rodriguez-Prieto
,
The next issue is whether Marroquin can show that this obvious error substantially affected his sentence. Taking away the two points that should not have been included reduces his criminal history category from a V to IV. That would result in an advisory Guidelines range of 15 to 21 months instead of the range of 21 to 27 months the court used in sentencing Marroquin. When "a defendant is sentenced under an incorrect Guidelines range," the error will usually result in prejudice to the defendant.
Molina-Martinez v. United States
, --- U.S. ----,
But unique circumstances may overcome this rule that a Guidelines error ordinarily will harm the defendant.
Id
. at 1346. The government tries to show this is one of those atypical cases by arguing that another criminal history scoring error inured to Marroquin's benefit. Marroquin was convicted of another North Carolina drug offense that like the consolidated sentence resulted in a prison term of six to eight months. But the state court suspended that sentence and placed Marroquin on 30 months' supervised probation, with 30 days imprisonment as a condition of probation. The government contends that Marroquin should have received two points instead of one for this conviction because the court ordered that Marroquin receive credit for 119 days that he served in custody prior to the suspension of the sentence. Those 119 days spent in custody should have, the government argues, resulted in two points for this sentence rather than the one it was assigned in the PSR.
1
See
United States v. Fernandez
,
That leaves the requirement that Marroquin show the error seriously affected the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings. The combined nature and impact of the error satisfy that high burden. The error reflected a basic misunderstanding of the state sentencing scheme under which Marroquin was sentenced. The error would not have occurred if Marroquin had been sentenced in a federal court in the circuit that includes that state. And although the four-month disparity between his sentence and the corrected Guidelines range is not sizeable, we have corrected errors with a similar impact.
See, e.g.
,
United States v. Guillen-Cruz
,
As a final note, Marroquin was simultaneously sentenced on his new illegal reentry offense and for the revocation of his supervised release on a prior one (he received a consecutive eight-month sentence for the revocation). The appeals of the two were consolidated. Although Marroquin does not identify a separate error in his revocation proceeding, the government agrees with him that vacatur of the new sentence should also result in vacatur of the revocation sentence so the district court can consider both anew given the potential impact of one of the sentences on the other. So we remand for a full resentencing at which the government can raise its argument about the 119-day credit.
* * *
The judgments are VACATED and both matters are REMANDED for resentencing.
The threshold for two points is 60 days, so the 30 days would count as one point but 119 days would count as two. See U.S.S.G. § 4A1.1(b), (c) ; see also id . § 4A1.2, cmt. n.2 (explaining that a probation sentence should be assigned one point "unless a condition of probation requiring imprisonment of at least sixty days was imposed.").
Reference
- Full Case Name
- UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee v. Rafael Rios MARROQUIN, Also Known as Tomas Andres Marroquin, Defendant-Appellant United States of America, Plaintiff-Appellee v. Rafael Rios Marroquin, Defendant-Appellant
- Cited By
- 5 cases
- Status
- Published