United States v. Rodriguez-Pena

108 F.4th 12

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Hector RODRIGUEZ-PENA, a/k/a Papo Guame, Defendant, Appellant.

No. 22-1790

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit

July 16, 2024

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO [Hon. Aida M. Delgado-Colón, U.S. District Judge]

Rafael F. Castro Lang on brief for appellant.

Thomas F. Klumper, Assistant United States Attorney, W. Stephen Muldrow, United States Attorney, and Mariana E. Bauzá-Almonte, Assistant United States Attorney, on brief for appellee.

Before Kayatta, Gelpí, and Rikelman, Circuit Judges.

GELPÍ, Circuit Judge.

This is Hector Rodriguez-Pena's ("Rodriguez-Pena")¹ most recent appeal concerning his imprisonment and convictions for drug trafficking, firearms possession, and the attempted murder of federal law enforcement officers. He appeals the district court's denial of his motion for compassionate release under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A), as amended by the First Step Act, Pub. L. No. 115-391, § 603(b), 132 Stat. 5194, 5239 (2018). The district court concluded that Rodriguez-Pena did not show extraordinary and compelling reasons for a sentence reduction. We affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

We recount only the facts necessary to our decision. For more detail about the underlying offenses and Rodriguez-Pena's appeals, an interested reader can consult United States v. Rodriguez-Pena, 54 F.3d 764 (1st Cir. 1995) (unpublished table decision) and United States v. Rodríguez-Peña, 470 F.3d 431 (1st Cir. 2006) (per curiam).

From 1991 to 1992, Rodriguez-Pena conspired with others to smuggle marijuana and cocaine into Puerto Rico. Rodriguez-Pena, 1995 WL 275691, at *1. During this conspiracy, he aided and abetted the attempted murder of three law enforcement officers. Id. at *2-3, 13.

Rodriguez-Pena and his co-conspirators were charged in a twelve-count, second superseding indictment. A jury convicted Rodriguez-Pena on June 21, 1993, of eight counts: (1) Counts One, Two, and Three, conspiring to import, importing, and possessing with the intent to distribute controlled substances, 21 U.S.C. §§ 963, 841(a)(1), 952(a); (2) Count Four, using a telephone in furtherance of drug trafficking, 21 U.S.C. § 843(b); (3) Count Six, possessing a firearm during the commission of drug trafficking, 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1); and (4) Counts Seven, Eight, and Nine, aiding and abetting attempted murder of federal officers in the line of duty, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2, 1114. Rodriguez-Pena, 1995 WL 275691, at *11. On October 18, 1993, he was sentenced to 360 months' imprisonment on Count Six and 262 months' imprisonment on the remaining counts. The terms of imprisonment ran consecutively, totaling 622 months' imprisonment.²

For the past thirty years, Rodriguez-Pena has challenged his sentence and conviction in a myriad of ways. He first directly appealed his conviction and sentence. Id. We affirmed. Id. at *19. He then attacked his sentence collaterally under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 and moved several times for sentencing modifications, corrections, or reductions. The district court rejected these motions, and we affirmed whenever we were brought into the fray. See, e.g., Rodríguez-Peña, 470 F.3d at 432. The district court, however, on February 4, 2016, ultimately reduced his 262-month term to 210 months in response to an amendment to the Sentencing Guidelines (thus reducing his original, total term of imprisonment to 570 months). See U.S.S.G., App. C Supp., amend. 782 (effective Nov. 1, 2014).

Rodriguez-Pena first moved for compassionate release to reduce his total sentence to 360 months' imprisonment on February 17, 2021. He premised his motion upon one extraordinary and compelling reason: his vulnerability to COVID-19, having tested positive for the virus on July 23, 2020. He attributed catching the virus and his risk of reinfection to the virus's prevalence in Federal Correctional Institution Coleman Low ("FCI Coleman Low"), where he is incarcerated. He argued that because he was overweight and has high blood pressure, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia (high cholesterol), he faced an increased risk of serious complications if he was reinfected. Likewise, he proffered evidence purporting to prove that the conditions in FCI Coleman Low exacerbated the spread of COVID-19. Rodriguez-Pena, moreover, pointed towards his rehabilitation while incarcerated and argued that this justified his compassionate release under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a).

After the government opposed, the district court denied the motion in a succinct docket order. Rodriguez-Pena appealed. We then granted the government's "consented-to motion to summarily vacate the district court's order and to remand for further proceedings," United States v. Rodriguez-Pena, No. 21-1635, 2022 WL 1194388, at *1 (1st Cir. Apr. 19, 2022), and, on remand, the parties filed supplemental memoranda in the district court.

The tenor of Rodriguez-Pena's arguments on remand remained the same. He argued that the risk COVID-19 posed to him in FCI Coleman Low was an extraordinary and compelling reason for compassionate release. And he emphasized the prevalence of new variants and the supposed ineffectiveness of and problems with COVID-19 vaccines to bolster his position. This time, he noted that our intervening decision in United States v. Ruvalcaba, 26 F.4th 14, 28 (1st Cir. 2022), required district courts to weigh "any complex of circumstances" that a defendant presents in support of compassionate release and determine if those circumstances -- whether individually or together -- are extraordinary and compelling. As for § 3553(a), he noted that the district court ought to conclude that his rehabilitation while incarcerated favored compassionate release.

In its supplemental memorandum, the government opposed both prongs of Rodriguez-Pena's renewed arguments. Relevant here, it outlined the plan by the Bureau of Prisons ("BOP") to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. That plan employed social distancing, quarantining, regular testing, and vaccination. The government explained how this greatly reduced the spread in FCI Coleman Low, so much so that only one inmate out of 1,935 at the facility had tested positive for COVID-19 at the time of Rodriguez-Pena's motion.

The district court denied the motion on two grounds. First, it rejected Rodriguez-Pena's "extraordinary-and-compelling"argument premised on COVID-19. It concluded that Rodriguez-Pena had demonstrated neither "a particularized susceptibility to the disease" nor "a particularized risk of contracting the disease at his prison facility" (quoting United States v. Gandía-Maysonet, 96-CR-304, 2021 WL 219191, at *1 (D.P.R. Jan. 21, 2021)). It pointed out that Rodriguez-Pena was fully vaccinated -- having "received two doses of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine and a booster shot in February[ ]2022" -- against COVID-19 and in good health, despite his medical conditions. It bolstered this point by noting that, when Rodriguez-Pena tested positive for COVID-19 in 2020, he was asymptomatic. Because only one inmate in FCI Coleman Low was diagnosed with COVID-19 at the time of Rodriguez-Pena's motion, then the district court also found it unlikely that he risked reinfection. And it rejected his contention that COVID-19 vaccines are ineffective, stating that his position was "contradicted by a wealth of competent medical data." It described the data that he offered showing high COVID-19 transmission rates in FCI Coleman Low as "outdated" and noted that "the risks to [him] have abated significantly since the time he requested compassionate release." Second, the district court found that the § 3553(a) factors did not warrant compassionate release.

Rodriguez-Pena timely appealed.

II. DISCUSSION

A. Standard of Review

"We review a district court's denial or grant of a compassionate release motion for abuse of discretion. Questions of law are reviewed de novo and findings of fact are reviewed for clear error." United States v. Gonzalez, 68 F.4th 699, 702 (1st Cir. 2023) (citations omitted).

B. Extraordinary and Compelling Reasons

Rodriguez-Pena contends (1) that the district court erred because it did not consider whether his health conditions and vulnerability to COVID-19, FCI Coleman Low's inability to prevent COVID-19's spread, and his rehabilitation while imprisoned holistically constituted an "extraordinary and compelling reason" for compassionate release; and (2) that the district court ignored his evidence of rehabilitation when it independently denied his compassionate release motion under § 3553(a). We find that the district court acted within its discretion when it concluded that Rodriguez-Pena did not offer an extraordinary and compelling reason for a sentence reduction, so we affirm on that basis. Cf. PDK Lab'ys, Inc. v. U.S. D.E.A., 362 F.3d 786, 799 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (Roberts, J., concurring) ("[I]f it is not necessary to decide more, it is necessary not to decide more . . . .").

Ordinarily, a "court may not modify a term of imprisonment once it has been imposed." 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c). But Congress carved out an exception, known commonly as the "compassionate-release statute." United States v. Saccoccia, 10 F.4th 1, 3 (1st Cir. 2021). The compassionate-release statute "authorizes a court upon motion by an incarcerated individual who [(1)] has exhausted [his] administrative remedies to reduce a term of imprisonment when [(2)] extraordinary and compelling reasons warrant such a reduction, and [(3)] when the sentencing factors set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) counsel in favor of such a reduction." United States v. Ayala-Vázquez, 96 F.4th 1, 12 (1st Cir. 2024) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted); see 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A).

"A district court exercising its powers to reduce a sentence of imprisonment under § 3582(c)(1)(A) ordinarily must ensure that 'such a reduction is consistent with applicable policy statements issued by the Sentencing Commission.' " Gonzalez, 68 F.4th at 704. But we held in ...