United States v. Gonzalo Holguin-Hernandez
United States v. Gonzalo Holguin-Hernandez
Opinion
Case: 18-50386 Document: 00515383100 Page: 1 Date Filed: 04/15/2020
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit No. 18-50386 FILED Summary Calendar April 15, 2020 Lyle W. Cayce Clerk UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee v. GONZALO HOLGUIN-HERNANDEZ, Defendant-Appellant
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas
ON REMAND FROM THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT Before JONES, * HAYNES, and WILLETT, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM: Gonzalo Holguin-Hernandez pleaded true to the allegation that he violated a condition of his supervised release by committing a new offense, specifically, aiding and abetting possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. The new offense involved over 100 kilograms of marijuana. Under the Guidelines policy statements for this Grade A violation, Holguin- Hernandez’s recommended range was twelve to eighteen months. The district
* Judge Benavides has removed himself from this case. Judge Jones has been substituted in his place.
Case: 18-50386 Document: 00515383100 Page: 2 Date Filed: 04/15/2020
No. 18-50386 court imposed a bottom-of-the-range sentence of twelve months but ordered it to run consecutively to the sentence imposed on the new marijuana offense.
Holguin-Hernandez appealed, arguing that his twelve-month total sentence was greater than necessary to effectuate the sentencing goals of 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) and was therefore unreasonable. Applying our well- established prior precedent, as we are required to do, we ruled that Holguin- Hernandez failed to raise his challenges in the district court, such that our review was for plain error only. United States v. Holguin-Hernandez, 746 F. App’x 403
Holguin-Hernandez, 140 S. Ct. at 764, 765, 767. The Court declined to decide any further issues and remanded for our consideration consistent with its opinion: We hold only that the defendant here properly preserved the claim that his 12-month sentence was unreasonably long by advocating for a shorter sentence and thereby arguing, in effect, that this shorter sentence would have proved “sufficient,” while a sentence of 12 months or longer would be “greater than necessary” to “comply with” the statutory purposes of punishment. Id. at 767 (quoting 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)).
Our review is confined to whether the sentence is substantively reasonable. See Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 51 (2007). Applying an abuse of discretion standard, id., 1 we conclude that the district court did not
1 Arguably some of Holguin-Hernandez’s specific arguments were not preserved and are subject to plain error review. Cf. United States v. Holguin-Hernandez, 140 S. Ct. 762, 767
Case: 18-50386 Document: 00515383100 Page: 3 Date Filed: 04/15/2020
No. 18-50386 reversibly err in assessing this sentence. As explained above, the twelve- month revocation sentence is within the applicable advisory Guidelines policy statement ranges. See U.S.S.G. § 7B1.4(a). The district court’s order that the revocation sentence run consecutively to the sentence for the new marijuana offense is consistent with U.S.S.G. § 7B1.3(f), which provides that “[a]ny term of imprisonment imposed upon the revocation of . . . supervised release shall be ordered to be served consecutively to any sentence of imprisonment that the defendant is serving.” Reviewing the district court’s remarks cited by Holguin- Hernandez, we conclude that nothing inappropriate was considered and the district court’s sentence was reasonable.
The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.
(Alito, J., concurring) (“[W]e do not decide whether this petitioner property preserved his particular substantive-reasonableness arguments, namely that he did not pose a danger to the public and that a 12-month sentence would not serve deterrence purposes.”). However, because Holguin- Hernandez would not prevail even under the less deferential abuse of discretion standard, we do not reach that question here.
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