United States v. Amezcua-Vasquez
2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 11658, 567 F.3d 1050, 2009 WL 1508566 (2009)
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Rule of Law:
A sentence that adheres to the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines may be substantively unreasonable under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) if it includes a large enhancement based on a predicate conviction that is extremely old, and the defendant's subsequent history does not show continued violent conduct.
Facts:
- In 1957, Javier Amezcua-Vasquez, a native of Mexico, became a lawful permanent resident of the United States at the age of two.
- In 1981, at the age of twenty-six, Amezcua-Vasquez was involved in a gang-related bar fight and stabbed someone with a knife.
- As a result of the 1981 incident, he was convicted in state court of attempted voluntary manslaughter and assault with great bodily injury, and was ultimately sentenced to four years in prison.
- Amezcua-Vasquez was released on parole in 1984 and discharged the following year.
- For the next twenty years, his criminal record consisted of non-violent offenses, primarily related to substance abuse.
- In 2006, at the age of fifty-one, Amezcua-Vasquez was ordered removed to Mexico on the basis of his 1981 convictions, which were classified as aggravated felonies.
- Two weeks after his removal, Amezcua-Vasquez was apprehended attempting to re-enter the United States to return to his family and work in California.
Procedural Posture:
- Javier Amezcua-Vasquez was indicted in federal district court on one count of attempted illegal reentry in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326.
- He pled guilty without a plea agreement.
- A Presentence Report calculated his advisory Guidelines range as 46 to 57 months, based in large part on a 16-level enhancement under U.S.S.G. § 2L1.2 for his 1981 'crime of violence' conviction.
- At sentencing, Amezcua-Vasquez objected to the enhancement and argued that the resulting Guidelines sentence would be substantively unreasonable.
- The district court rejected his arguments and imposed a sentence of 52 months imprisonment.
- Amezcua-Vasquez appealed his sentence to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
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Issue:
Is a 52-month sentence, calculated in accordance with the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, substantively unreasonable when it is primarily the result of a 16-level enhancement for a violent crime conviction that occurred twenty-five years prior to the current offense?
Opinions:
Majority - Canby, Circuit Judge
Yes, the sentence is substantively unreasonable. While the 16-level enhancement under U.S.S.G. § 2L1.2 was correctly calculated, its unmitigated application resulted in a sentence that fails to properly reflect the considerations of 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). The court reasoned that the staleness of the 25-year-old predicate conviction, combined with Amezcua-Vasquez's subsequent history lacking similar violent offenses, significantly diminishes the seriousness of the current illegal re-entry offense. Mechanically applying the severe enhancement without accounting for the passage of time and the defendant's specific circumstances constitutes a clear error of judgment and an abuse of discretion, as it treats a defendant with a remote violent past the same as one with a recent one, creating 'unwarranted similarities' rather than avoiding unwarranted disparities.
Analysis:
This decision is significant in the post-Booker advisory Guidelines era, clarifying the scope of substantive reasonableness review. It establishes that appellate courts can vacate a within-Guidelines sentence if the district court fails to conduct a sufficiently individualized assessment under § 3553(a). The ruling empowers defendants to argue for variances based on the extreme age of prior convictions used for sentencing enhancements, suggesting that the passage of time can render a rigid application of the Guidelines unreasonable. This precedent requires sentencing courts to look beyond the mechanical calculation and weigh whether an enhancement, particularly a severe one, accurately reflects the seriousness of the present offense in light of the defendant's entire history.
