Case Information
*1 Not for Publication in West's Federal Reporter United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit
No. 13-1906
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Appellee,
v. PEDRO J. PÉREZ-CRESPO, a/k/a PIRI, Defendant, Appellant.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO [Hon. José A. Fusté, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Torruella, Selya and Thompson,
Circuit Judges. José R. Olmo-Rodríguez on brief for appellant. Rosa Emilia Rodríguez-Vélez, United States Attorney, Nelson Pérez-Sosa, Assistant United States Attorney, Chief, Appellate Division, and Francisco A. Besosa-Martínez, Assistant United States Attorney, on brief for appellee.
June 11, 2014
*2
Per Curiam. After entering into a written plea
agreement, defendant-appellant Pedro J. Pérez-Crespo pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiring to possess with intent to distribute controlled substances within 1,000 feet of a public housing project. See 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 846, 860. At the disposition hearing, the district court classified the appellant as a career offender, see USSG §4B1.1, and set his guideline sentencing range (GSR) at 188-235 months. The court then imposed a mid-range sentence: 210 months in prison. This timely appeal followed.
The appellant concedes that he meets the definition of a career offender. He likewise concedes the correctness of the district court's calculation of the GSR. He nonetheless challenges his sentence on the ground that it is substantively unreasonable.
The government tries to place a stumbling block at the threshold. It posits that the appellant's real complaint is that the district court refused to depart downward from the GSR and that we lack appellate jurisdiction to review a district court's discretionary decision not to depart. This argument is misguided.
From and after the Supreme Court's decision in United
States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220, 245 (2005), review for
reasonableness "encompasses virtually the entire gamut of sentences
imposed under the advisory guidelines, including sentences shaped
by discretionary departure decisions." United States v. Anonymous
Defendant,
When evaluating the substantive reasonableness of a
criminal sentence, appellate review is for abuse of discretion.
See Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 51 (2007). This is a
deferential standard, see United States v. Martin,
We have explained that "the linchpin of a reasonable
sentence is a plausible sentencing rationale and a defensible
result." Id. at 96. The sentence imposed in this case — which was
at the mid-point of a properly calculated GSR — passes muster under
this prescription. See United States v. Clogston,
The appellant argues that his sentence is unreasonable because it is based primarily on the career offender classification, which grossly overrepresents his true culpability. *4 This argument lacks force. The appellant, through able counsel, made this overrepresentation argument to the district court. The court rejected it because the court believed that "a career offender [designation] is a pretty serious thing." This battlefield assessment is worthy of deference: on the record before us, we cannot quarrel either with the wisdom of the court's statement or with its applicability to the appellant's situation.
In any event, we have independently examined the appellant's criminal record and find the claim of overrepresentation unpersuasive. The appellant has no fewer than five prior convictions for offenses that include charges involving domestic violence, aggravated assault, and controlled substances. While a sentencing court, in the exercise of its sound discretion, might have opted to view this litany of malefactions more empathetically, the court below was not obliged to do so. And if the court took the appellant's record at face value — as it was entitled to do — that record was adequate to ground a sentence near the mid-point of the GSR.
"There is no one reasonable sentence in any given case
but, rather, a universe of reasonable sentencing outcomes."
Clogston,
Affirmed.
Notes
[1] The government also asseverates that a waiver-of-appeal provision in the plea agreement bars this appeal. Because this asseveration is problematic and the appeal is easily resolved on the merits, we bypass the government's waiver argument.