United States v. Fígaro-Benjamín

100 F.4th 294

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Maximiliano FÍGARO-BENJAMÍN, Defendant, Appellant.

No. 21-1749

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit

April 30, 2024

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO [Hon. Francisco A. Besosa, U.S. District Judge]

Edgar L. Sánchez-Mercado for appellant.

Julia M. Meconiates, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom W. Stephen Muldrow, United States Attorney, and Mariana E. Bauzá-Almonte, Assistant United States Attorney, Chief, Appellate Division, were on brief, for appellee.

Before Kayatta, Lipez, and Thompson, Circuit Judges.

THOMPSON, Circuit Judge.

Before this court is another installment in the multi-defendant drug conspiracy case involving the Black Wolfpack, a vessel that transported cocaine smugglers and their product between Puerto Rico and St. Thomas until federal agents intercepted the boat and its trafficking crew off the coast of St. Thomas in January 2018. Since then, the indictees (charged with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute controlled substances in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841 and 846 and conspiracy to import controlled substances into the U.S. in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 952, 960, and 963) have brought assorted challenges to sundry aspects of the criminal proceedings that followed.

Today, the Black Wolfpack sails again, this time in an appeal brought by Maximiliano Fígaro-Benjamín (Fígaro-Benjamín), a coconspirator and one-time captain of the boat, who raises a series of challenges to the 292-month sentence the district court imposed in the wake of Fígaro-Benjamín's straight guilty plea. Fígaro-Benjamín filed this timely appeal, in which he takes issue with what evidence the court relied upon at sentencing and with how it calculated and explained the sentence it meted out. In fielding the appeal, we write primarily for the parties, who well know the facts, travel, and issues presented to us. Accordingly, we endeavor to be efficient with the background information we do include here,¹ directing readers to our earlier cases chronicling the conspiracy narrative in considerable detail so we can move directly to our analysis of the various appellate issues Fígaro-Benjamín presents.²

As our examination will reveal, we must affirm.

I.

Having studied Fígaro-Benjamín's papers carefully, we think his arguments can be best distilled as follows: (a) the sentencing court committed error when it considered testimony elicited at the trial of Fígaro-Benjamín's coconspirators; (b) the court improperly calculated his guidelines sentencing range (GSR) because the court relied on an unsupported-by-the-record drug quantity and, in addition, erroneously found Fígaro-Benjamín was a supervisor in the trafficking operation; and (c) the court committed procedural error when it inadequately explained its pronounced sentence. We take these in turn.

(a) Reliance on Trial Testimony at Sentencing

Fígaro-Benjamín submits the sentencing court erred and infringed on his Sixth Amendment rights when, without notice, it considered what he says is unreliable testimony offered by José Javier Resto Miranda (Resto),³ not at Fígaro-Benjamín's sentencing hearing, but at the trial of his codefendants, Martínez and Andino.⁴

For its part, the government disagrees and says the district court offended no constitutional right afforded to Fígaro-Benjamín when it considered Resto's testimony.

And this is our take, offered (favorably to Fígaro-Benjamín) under the most appellant-friendly lens of review this type of claim could garner. See, e.g., United States v. Sandoval, 6 F.4th 63, 86 (1st Cir. 2021) (assuming a confrontation-based argument was preserved "because, even on the understanding that our review is de novo, [that] challenge still fails").

It is axiomatic that, as here, when fashioning a sentence, a court must take into account the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factors (like the nature and circumstances of the offense, the defendant's history and characteristics, the need for the sentence to reflect the seriousness of the offense and promote respect for the law, to provide deterrence, to protect the public, to provide the defendant with needed training and care, and so on). When a sentencing court does this, in general there is "[n]o limitation . . . placed on the information concerning the background, character, and conduct of a person convicted of an offense which a court of the United States may receive and consider." 18 U.S.C. § 3661.

Just as axiomatic is the principle that defendants do not ordinarily enjoy a Sixth Amendment right to confrontation at sentencing. United States v. Rondón-García, 886 F.3d 14, 21 (1st Cir. 2018) (providing that, at "a sentencing hearing, neither the Federal Rules of Evidence nor the Sixth Amendment's confrontation clause applies"); see also United States v. Berrios-Miranda, 919 F.3d 76, 81 (1st Cir. 2019); United States v. Bramley, 847 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir. 2017). As a result, "sentencing judges may consider any evidence with 'sufficient indicia of reliability to support its probable accuracy.' " Berrios-Miranda, 919 F.3d at 80 (quoting United States v. Cintrón-Echautegui, 604 F.3d 1, 6 (1st Cir. 2010)). "Under this approach, the court has considerable leeway to rely upon 'virtually any dependable information.' " Id. (quoting United States v. Doe, 741 F.3d 217, 236 (1st Cir. 2013)); see also Cintrón-Echautegui, 604 F.3d at 6 ("These tenets are fully applicable to drug quantity determinations.").

But the court's discretion to do so "is not boundless and must comply with due process considerations and the parameters of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32."⁵ Rondón-García, 886 F.3d at 21 (citing Bramley, 847 F.3d at 5); see also Betterman v. Montana, 578 U.S. 437, 448, 136 S.Ct. 1609, 194 L.Ed.2d 723 (2016) ("After conviction, a defendant's due process right . . . is still present. He retains an interest in a sentencing proceeding that is fundamentally fair."). And "[d]ue process requires that the defendant be sentenced on information that is not false or materially inaccurate." Rondón-García, 886 F.3d at 21 (citing United States v. Curran, 926 F.2d 59, 61 (1st Cir. 1991)). In addition, "[t]he defendant must be given adequate notice of those facts [the court will consider] prior to sentencing and the court must 'timely advise the defendant . . . that it heard or read, and was taking into account [those facts].' " Id. (quoting United States v. Acevedo-López, 873 F.3d 330, 341 (1st Cir. 2017)) (cleaned up). " '[A] defendant must be provided with a meaningful opportunity to comment on the factual information on which his or her sentence is based,' unless that information 'all[s] within the garden variety considerations which should not generally come as a surprise to trial lawyers who have prepared for sentencing.' " Id. (alterations in original) (first quoting United States v. Berzon, 941 F.2d 8, 21 (1st Cir. 1991), then quoting United States v. Pantojas-Cruz, 800 F.3d 54, 61 (1st Cir. 2015)).

Here, the district court, in fashioning a sentence, considered evidence from the trial of Fígaro-Benjamín's codefendants, accepting as reliable Resto's testimony regarding the amount of cocaine being ferried between Caribbean islands and Fígaro-Benjamín's role in that scheme. Our inquiry is whether, in doing so, the court ran afoul of any of the just-recounted legal foundational principles as Fígaro-Benjamín suggests it did. We conclude it did not, and here's why.

The first of our conclusions here rests upon our application of straightforward, well-settled case law: As earlier noted and as the government correctly points out, defendants do not enjoy a Sixth Amendment right to confrontation at sentencing, meaning the fact that Resto did not personally testify at Fígaro-Benjamín's sentencing hearing, in and of itself, is not determinative. See, e.g., id. Fígaro-Benjamín's opening brief cites no law to suggest otherwise, and indeed he acknowledges this controlling precedent in his reply papers.

We do agree with Fígaro-Benjamín's contention that information provided by Resto and considered by the court needed to have the necessary indicia of reliability and trustworthiness, but after our review of the record, we reject his assertion that the information here was wanting. For one thing, Fígaro-Benjamín's sentencer had presided over the codefendants' trial, and because of that, he was well-acquainted with the Black Wolfpack, its crew, its methods, and the crimes committed. Additionally, the judge's front row seat at trial allowed him to witness and assess Resto's credibility and testimony. See Berrios-Miranda, 919 F.3d at 81 ("Plus, the resentencing judge presided over Berrios's codefendant's trial, so she was already familiar with the issues and had been there to observe the victim's testimony and assess credibility firsthand."). And, critically, Resto's testimony was offered under oath, corroborated by other evidence,⁶ see, e.g., id. (reasoning that the court's reliance on trial testimony was within its discretion when the testimony was given under oath and corroborated by other evidence), and put through the cross-examination gauntlet by defense attorneys at trial, cf. id. at 80-81 (reasoning that "even . . . 'statements which have not been subjected to the crucible of cross-examination' " can be relied upon in the court's considerable discretion (quoting Acevedo-López, 873 F.3d at 340)).

Our final resolution of this aspect of Fígaro-Benjamín's sentencing challenge centers on whether we conclude he received adequate notice that Resto's prior testimony would be used at his sentencing hearing. He says he did not. Yet in his briefing, Fígaro-Benjamín fails to elucidate why he believes that to be so. And after our perusal of the record, we find he got what notice due process demands, as we explain.

In September 2019, two years before his sentence was imposed, Fígaro-Benjamín himself requested (and got a same-day order granting...