United States v. Gonzalez , 736 F.3d 40 ( 2013 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 12-2273
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Appellee,
v.
GERALDO GONZALEZ,
Defendant, Appellant.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
[Hon. Joseph N. Laplante, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Thompson, Selya and Lipez,
Circuit Judges.
Jane Elizabeth Lee on brief for appellant.
John P. Kacavas, United States Attorney, and Seth R. Aframe,
Assistant United States Attorney, on brief for appellee.
November 20, 2013
SELYA, Circuit Judge. This appeal tees up a question
that has divided our sister circuits: does Federal Rule of Criminal
Procedure 32, entitled "Sentencing and Judgment," apply to a
sentencing proceeding that follows the revocation of a term of
supervised release? We decline the opportunity to take a swing at
answering this question. Discretion is often the better part of
valor, and courts should not rush to decide unsettled legal issues
that can easily be avoided.
Taking this prudential path, we bypass the Rule 32
question and address the appellant's claims on the merits. After
careful consideration, we affirm the sentence imposed.
We start with the travel of the case. On April 18, 2006,
a federal grand jury sitting in the District of New Hampshire
charged defendant-appellant Geraldo Gonzalez with possession of
cocaine with intent to distribute. See 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1).
After accepting a guilty plea, the district court sentenced the
appellant to a 30-month term of immurement plus 3 years of
supervised release.
The appellant served his prison sentence but, during his
ensuing supervised release, flunked drug tests administered by the
probation department. Following a hearing, the district court
revoked his term of supervised release, sentenced him to serve 6
months in prison, and imposed a new 30-month supervised release
term.
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Once again, the appellant served his prison sentence
without apparent incident. Withal, his second supervised release
stint proved to be no more successful than his first. We offer a
decurtate account of four incidents that collectively inform the
appellant's fall from grace.
• Nashua Incident. In December of 2011, the
appellant was eyeing a group of three women at a nightclub in
Nashua, New Hampshire. The women asked the appellant to move away.
When he refused, the women attacked him and he responded in kind.
The police arrived and broke up the altercation.
• Portsmouth Incident. On January 13, 2012, the
appellant and his quondam girlfriend were at a bar in Portsmouth,
New Hampshire. According to the woman, the appellant struck her
several times. At her instigation, a criminal complaint was filed
in state court charging the appellant with simple assault, criminal
threatening, and witness tampering. At the time of the later
revocation hearing, these charges remained pending and unresolved.
The appellant says that no such assault transpired and
that the events limned in the criminal complaint are fabrications.
Despite his protestations of innocence, the appellant's probation
officer filed a notice of violation based on the Portsmouth
incident and the related charges. A federal warrant issued for the
appellant's arrest.
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• Lawrence Incident. While attempting to execute
this warrant, United States Marshals spotted a car in Lawrence,
Massachusetts. They believed that the appellant was driving the
vehicle. They tried to effect a stop but, after a short chase, the
driver eluded them. The car was later found abandoned; its
contents included shooting targets and two egg-shaped balls filled
with a white powder.
• New Jersey Incident. On February 22, 2012, while
driving in New Jersey, the appellant fell asleep at the wheel and
wrecked his car. When police responded to the crash, the appellant
furnished false identification. The officers were not bamboozled;
they ferreted out the appellant's true identity and arrested him
for possession of a simulated document. After a brief stay in a
New Jersey jail, the appellant was transferred to federal custody.
At a hearing held on October 9, 2012, the appellant
pleaded guilty to three supervised release violations: failure to
make required daily phone calls to receive drug-testing
instructions; commission of a new state criminal offense
(possession of a simulated document); and leaving the jurisdiction
without permission of either the court or the probation officer.
The court asked questions about the two counts pertaining to the
New Jersey incident, and also commented about the Nashua,
Portsmouth, and Lawrence incidents. At the end of the hearing the
court, surveying the tableau created by descriptions of the four
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incidents, revoked the extant term of supervised release. It then
sentenced the appellant to a flat 18-month incarcerative term
(without any additional period of supervised release). The
appellant responded by prosecuting this timely appeal.
In this venue, the appellant attacks his sentence on two
grounds. First, he asserts that the district court violated
Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32(i)(3)(B) by failing to make
rulings on controverted issues of fact raised at sentencing.
Second, he asserts that the court's factfinding vis-à-vis the
Nashua incident was not only clearly erroneous but also adversely
affected his sentence.
The appellant gives the heaviest emphasis to his Rule 32
argument. At the outset, we note that it is uncertain whether Rule
32 applies at all to revocation of a term of supervised release.
The Eleventh Circuit has stated that "[i]t is clear from the
language of Rule 32 that it does not apply to revocation hearings."
United States v. Jackson, 417 F. App'x 872, 874 (11th Cir. 2011)
(per curiam); accord United States v. Hernandez-Gonzalez, 163 F.
App'x 520, 522 (9th Cir. 2006). In the same vein, some courts have
declined to import Rule 32's grant of a right of allocution into
supervised release revocation proceedings, reasoning that to do so
would render Rule 32.1, entitled "Revoking or Modifying Probation
or Supervised Release," superfluous. See, e.g., United States v.
Waters, 158 F.3d 933, 944 (6th Cir. 1998) ("There is no indication
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that Congress intended [the] additional requirements [of Rule 32]
to apply to supervised release sentencing."). However, other
courts have held that Rule 32 and Rule 32.1 are designed to work
together in a complementary, not mutually exclusive, fashion.1
See, e.g., United States v. Patterson, 128 F.3d 1259, 1261 (8th
Cir. 1997) (per curiam); United States v. Rodriguez, 23 F.3d 919,
921 (5th Cir. 1994).
We need not try to cut a passable swath through this
thicket. Assuming for argument's sake, favorably to the appellant,
that Rule 32 does apply to revocation proceedings, the appellant's
claim nonetheless fails.
Before embarking on an explanation of our reasoning, we
pause to say a few words about the standard of review. We normally
review de novo a sentencing court's compliance vel non with the
strictures of Rule 32. United States v. González-Vélez, 587 F.3d
494, 508 (1st Cir. 2009). Here, however, the government contends
that the appellant's failure to articulate a particularized
objection below constrains our analysis to plain error. We need
1
This specific conflict with respect to the right of
allocution has now been resolved by a change in the rules. See
United States v. Carruth, 528 F.3d 845, 846 (11th Cir. 2008) (per
curiam). The advisory committee notes that accompany the 2005
amendments to Rule 32.1 point out that Rule 32.1(b)(2), as amended,
now explicitly provides for allocution rights at revocation
hearings. Fed. R. Crim. P. 32.1 advisory committee's note (2005
amendments).
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not resolve this contretemps: even under the more appellant-
friendly lens of de novo review, the claim of error is unavailing.
The claim of error focuses specifically on Rule
32(i)(3)(B). This provision states that, at sentencing, the court
"must — for any disputed portion of the presentence report or other
controverted matter — rule on the dispute or determine that a
ruling is unnecessary either because the matter will not affect
sentencing, or because the court will not consider the matter in
sentencing." For present purposes — and without deciding the issue
— we treat the revocation report as the functional equivalent of a
presentence report.
It is apodictic that, for the requirements of Rule
32(i)(3)(B) to attach, the defendant must first raise a factual
dispute on which the district court can rule. See United States v.
McGee, 529 F.3d 691, 700 (6th Cir. 2008) (explaining that "facts
must be sufficiently controverted to trigger the sentencing court's
fact-finding duty" (internal quotation marks omitted)). A
defendant may fulfill this prerequisite by a written objection to
the facts set forth in a presentence report, see Fed. R. Crim. P.
32(f)(1), or, if there is good cause for the delay, by a speaking
objection at the sentencing hearing, see Fed. R. Crim. P.
32(i)(1)(D). There is nothing in the record to indicate that the
appellant pursued either avenue.
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The only relevant writing submitted by or on behalf of
the appellant to the district court prior to the revocation hearing
was a sentencing memorandum (the Memorandum). The Memorandum did
not contain any objection to the facts limned in the revocation
report. Nor has the appellant identified anything in the
Memorandum that plausibly could be so construed.
By the same token, during the course of the revocation
hearing the appellant did not dispute any of the circumstances of
the Nashua, Portsmouth, or Lawrence incidents.2 To the precise
contrary, defense counsel specifically advised the court of the
appellant's decision not to contest or otherwise offer conflicting
evidence regarding those three incidents.
The colloquy that occurred at the revocation hearing
bears out this conclusion. As to the Nashua incident, the
prosecutor indicated that he had no reason to question the
appellant's account. As to the Portsmouth incident, defense
counsel lamented the fact that the revocation report referred to
the incident at all, but agreed that there were no "procedural or
constitutional infirmit[ies]" arising out of the revocation
report's description of that incident. As to the Lawrence
incident, defense counsel acknowledged that he "kn[e]w that's
2
We limit our inquiry to these three incidents because, in
his brief on appeal, the appellant has not raised even the
slightest question concerning the district court's treatment of the
facts surrounding the New Jersey incident.
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something that [the court] would consider because it's in a report
and it's not good for" his client; thus, he was "not going to
litigate that."
The appellant has a fallback position. He insists that
the court's very discussion of the Nashua, Portsmouth, and Lawrence
incidents transformed them into "controverted matter[s]" for the
purpose of Rule 32(i)(3)(B). This broadside distorts the district
court's remarks. To the extent that the district court mentioned
the Nashua, Portsmouth, and Lawrence incidents, it was to question
whether the undisputed facts surrounding those incidents affected
the appropriateness of a further term of supervised release. The
court mused that, regardless of the exact cause, the appellant
found ways to get himself into "jams constantly." The ubiquity of
these "jams" cast a negative light on his ability to be supervised
adequately.3
Seen in this light, "it [was] the significance of the
activities, not the activities themselves, that [was] in question."
United States v. Saxena, 229 F.3d 1, 10 (1st Cir. 2000). The law
is clear that the court was free to draw inferences from the
undisputed facts without tripping over Rule 32(i)(3)(B). In this
regard, Rule 32(i)(3)(B) "imposes an obligation upon the court to
3
The court's perspective on the Nashua incident is
illustrative. With respect to that incident, the court noted that
any way it was sliced, the appellant had thrust himself into an
altogether avoidable situation that morphed into a physical
altercation requiring police involvement.
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resolve contested facts that are material to a sentencing decision,
but that obligation does not extend to opinions and conclusions"
drawn by the court from unchallenged facts. Id. at 11 (emphasis in
original); see United States v. Garcia, 954 F.2d 12, 19 (1st Cir.
1992) (sentencing court's reliance on presentence report proper
when appellant couched objections "exclusively as interpretations
of the facts, not as challenges to the underlying facts
themselves").
Relatedly, the appellant claims that he did not
understand why the revocation report discussed matters that the
government did not intend to pursue. This concern obviously goes
to the mere inclusion of the statements, not to any doubts about
their factual accuracy. See United States v. Melendez, 279 F.3d
16, 18 (1st Cir. 2002) (per curiam). Consequently, Rule
32(i)(3)(B) is not implicated.
That ends this aspect of the matter. We find that,
regardless of which standard of review applies, the appellant has
not made out a viable claim under Rule 32(i)(3)(B).
This leaves one last claim of error. The appellant
suggests that the district court's factfinding with respect to the
Nashua incident was faulty. This suggestion can be swiftly
rebuffed.
As we already have explained, the government chose not to
contest the appellant's account of the Nashua incident. The court
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cannot have erred in finding facts regarding the Nashua incident
when it did not find facts at all but, rather, merely accepted the
parties' agreed version of the facts. See, e.g., United States v.
Torres-Vázquez, 731 F.3d 41, 45-46 (1st Cir. 2013) (finding no
error in district court's reliance on factual account when parties
were in agreement about the facts).
We need go no further. For the reasons elucidated above,
the sentence is
Affirmed.
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