United States of America v. Manuel Sanchez-Rojas
No. 16-3734
United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
Submitted: October 16, 2017; Filed: May 11, 2018
Before WOLLMAN, BEAM, and SHEPHERD, Circuit Judges.
Appeal from United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa - Waterloo
Manuel Sanchez-Rojas pleaded guilty to unlawful reentry as a removed alien after an aggravated felony conviction in violation of
was eight under § 2L1.2(a) of the 2015 U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual (Guidelines or U.S.S.G.). After increasing the offense level by eight for previously having been deported after “a conviction for an aggravated felony,” U.S.S.G. § 2L1.2(b)(1)(C), and reducing the offense level by three for acceptance of responsibility, U.S.S.G. § 3E1.1, the court determined that Sanchez-Rojas’s total offense level was 13, his criminal history category was V, and his advisory Guidelines sentencing range was 30 to 37 months’ imprisonment.2 Sanchez-Rojas was sentenced to 37 months’ imprisonment.
Sanchez-Rojas argues that the district court plainly erred in increasing his base offense level by eight under U.S.S.G. § 2L1.2(b)(1)(C). The enhancement was based on his previous burglary convictions in violation of
Sanchez-Rojas argued on appeal that
In Beckles v. United States, 137 S. Ct. 886 (2017), the Supreme Court upheld the residual clause used in U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2(a)(2), even though the Court had struck down as unconstitutionally vague the identically worded residual clause used in the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA),
Unlike the ACCA, . . . the advisory Guidelines do not fix the permissible range of sentences. To the contrary, they merely guide the exercise of a court’s discretion in choosing an appropriate sentence within the statutory range. Accordingly, the Guidelines are not subject to a vagueness challenge under the Due Process Clause.
Beckles, 137 S. Ct. at 892. Applying the Beckles/Johnson reasoning here, Sanchez-Rojas cannot maintain his vagueness challenge against U.S.S.G. § 2L1.2(b)(1)(C). We see no meaningful difference between a Guidelines section that uses the same language as a statute (like § 4B1.2(a)(2)) and a section that incorporates the statutory language by reference (like § 2L1.2(b)(1)(C)). Accordingly, we uphold the “aggravated felony” enhancement set forth in U.S.S.G. § 2L1.2(b)(1)(C), notwithstanding its incorporation of the definition of the now-declared vague “crime of violence” set forth in
Sanchez-Rojas also argues that his sentence is substantively unreasonable because the district court failed to give adequate weight to his acceptance of responsibility, the nature of his current offense, his devotion to his family, and his minimal criminal history in the past eighteen years. The district court weighed those factors against Sanchez-Rojas’s extensive criminal history, several deportations, and the fact that he threatened to shoot the law enforcement officers that arrested him. The court expressed “some concern that the advisory guideline range [was] not sufficient,” but ultimately decided to impose a sentence at the top of the Guidelines range. In light of the district court’s discretion “to weigh the § 3553(a) factors in each case and assign some factors greater weight than others in determining an appropriate sentence,” United States v. Bridges, 569 F.3d 374, 379 (8th Cir. 2009), we find no error in the court’s decision to impose a Guidelines-range sentence. See Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 51 (2007) (“If the sentence is within the Guidelines range, the appellate court may, but is not required to, apply a presumption of reasonableness.“).
The sentence is affirmed.