United States v. Richard Fuentes
Opinion
Richard Fuentes appeals the district court's five-year sentence imposed after his supervised release was revoked. Because we conclude that the sentence was not plain error, we affirm the judgment of the district court.
I.
In 2003, Richard Fuentes pled guilty to possession of a firearm as a person who had accrued three prior convictions for violent felonies under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA).
See
Johnson v. United States
, --- U.S. ----,
Fuentes then filed a
In February 2006, Fuentes filed a second § 2255 motion in district court in which he claimed that he was denied the effective assistance of trial counsel. The district court dismissed his second § 2255 motion without prejudice as an unauthorized successive § 2255 motion and as untimely.
Fuentes began his term of supervised release on March 8, 2016. In May 2016, the district court issued a summons for Fuentes at the probation officer's request and advised Fuentes to follow the applicable instructions and directives from the probation officer regarding Fuentes's sex offender evaluation and treatment. In September 2016, the probation officer filed a petition for a warrant recommending revocation of Fuentes's term of supervision due to his continued refusal to submit to sex offender evaluation and treatment. The petition contained two specific allegations against Fuentes: (1) in March 2016, he reported to a sex offender evaluation, but the evaluation could not be completed because he refused to sign the release of information documents; and (2) in August 2016, he reported twice to his sex offender evaluation, but the evaluation could not be completed on both occasions because he refused to participate fully in the process.
At his revocation hearing, Fuentes refused to admit to the allegations in the petition and stated that he complied with all applicable requirements. The probation officer testified that Fuentes (1) refused to sign the consent form for his sex offender evaluation until the day the district court summoned him and advised him to comply; (2) refused to answer various questions during the sex offender evaluation, thereby preventing completion of that evaluation; and (3) persisted in that refusal despite the probation officer's explanation that his refusal to comply constituted a violation of the terms of his supervised release. The counselor who attempted to perform Fuentes's sex offender evaluation testified that (1) Fuentes refused to sign the consent form at their first meeting; (2) after he eventually signed the consent form, he refused to answer certain evaluation questions; (3) his refusal to answer those questions prevented completion of the evaluation; and (4) he persisted in that refusal despite the counselor's explanation that the evaluation could not be completed without those answers. The district court determined that Fuentes violated his supervised release conditions and therefore revoked that term of supervised release.
The Government argued that Fuentes should be sentenced to the statutory maximum of five years of imprisonment, with no additional term of supervised release, because of Fuentes's steadfast refusal to comply with the terms of his release. The district court agreed with defense counsel that the revocation judgment could not include the sex offender condition for supervised release under current law because it was not based on a federal conviction. The district court sentenced Fuentes to five years of imprisonment with no term of supervised release. Fuentes filed a timely notice of appeal.
II.
On appeal, Fuentes argues that his five-year revocation sentence is substantively unreasonable because he (1) no longer qualifies for an enhanced penalty under the ACCA after Johnson and (2) has already served more time in prison than the non-ACCA aggregate maximum for his original offense and revocation. He concedes that he cannot challenge his underlying conviction and sentence and that he did not object to the revocation sentence.
*325
When a defendant properly preserves an objection for appeal, revocation sentences are reviewed under a "plainly unreasonable" standard.
See
The Supreme Court has recently found that, despite both being labeled "standards of review," the "plain error" inquiry is separate from the "substantive unreasonableness" inquiry.
Rosales-Mireles v. United States,
--- U.S. ----,
In this appeal, Fuentes notes that, at his original sentencing in 2003, he challenged the use of his Texas indecency-with-a-child conviction as a violent felony under the ACCA, but the Government responded that the indecency conviction qualified under the Act's residual clause. The sentencing court overruled his challenge and sentenced him to the mandatory minimum of 15 years of imprisonment required by the ACCA. In 2015, the Supreme Court held in
*326
Johnson
that increasing a defendant's sentence under the ACCA residual clause is unconstitutional.
Johnson
,
Fuentes contends that he was therefore wrongfully subject to enhanced penalties under the ACCA. He argues that he should have been subject to a ten-year statutory maximum term of imprisonment and, because that lowered his offense to a Class C felony under
In support of that view, he relies on this court's holding in
United States v. Willis
,
Willis does not directly control our decision here. Even if the case were otherwise indistinguishable, the Willis court was reviewing a properly preserved challenge, whereas we are reviewing only for plain error. This does not mean that Willis is irrelevant, but it does mean that Willis must have been sufficient to make it "clear or obvious" that Fuentes's sentence was unreasonable.
Taking this into account, we conclude that the sentencing court did not commit plain error in its decision. The defendant asks us to read Willis to have established a broad proposition that any sentence that was lengthened by an apparent constitutional defect in prior proceedings is substantively unreasonable. We do not believe that the case stood for such a broad proposition, let alone "obviously." The Willis court made clear that its holding was limited to the material facts of that case.
Furthermore, the facts here are materially different from those presented in *327 Willis . First, the nature of the alleged constitutional infirmity is quite different. In Willis, the defendant argued that his original convictions were multiplicitous on their face, unlike Fuentes, who alleges an error in his sentence which only became apparent years later due to an intervening Supreme Court decision.
Second, unlike
Willis
, the parties do not agree that Fuentes's original judgment of conviction was erroneous. Fuentes does not cite to a case holding that a Texas conviction for indecency with a child by contact no longer qualifies as a violent felony under the ACCA, but he instead argues that such a determination is supported by viewing
Johnson
's effect on various pre-
Johnson
cases regarding such offenses. This fact alone would likely be sufficient to affirm Fuentes's sentence.
United States v. Lucas
,
Third, even if Fuentes is correct that he would no longer qualify for an enhanced penalty under the ACCA, the relationship between the constitutional violation and Fuentes's sentence is quite different from
Willis.
In
Willis
, the uncorrected defect in the original conviction was both carried forward and exacerbated by the imposition of two consecutive revocation sentences.
Irrespective of whether these distinctions would be sufficient to persuade us to vacate the sentence under Willis had the defendant properly raised the issue below, they are sufficient to persuade us that the district court did not commit a plain error, particularly in the light of Willis 's careful limitation of its own precedential value. Because it is not plain that under existing law the statutory maximum revocation sentence is substantively unreasonable, the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.
One of the violent felony convictions listed in Fuentes's indictment was a conviction under Texas state law for indecency with a child by contact.
Some of our precedent goes further, suggesting that, even when the defendant objects at the district court level, we must also ask whether the "error was obvious under existing law" as part of the "plainly unreasonable" review.
See
Miller
,
Reference
- Full Case Name
- UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee v. Richard FUENTES, Defendant-Appellant
- Cited By
- 31 cases
- Status
- Published