Hector Manuel Rosales-Diaz v. United States

CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
DecidedFebruary 20, 2020
Docket16-17304
StatusUnpublished

This text of Hector Manuel Rosales-Diaz v. United States (Hector Manuel Rosales-Diaz v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Hector Manuel Rosales-Diaz v. United States, (11th Cir. 2020).

Opinion

Case: 16-17304 Date Filed: 02/20/2020 Page: 1 of 17

[DO NOT PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT ________________________

No. 16-17304 ________________________

D.C. Docket Nos. 8:16-cv-01842-RAL-TGW; 8:08-cr-00117-RAL-TGW-1

HECTOR MANUEL ROSALES-DIAZ,

Petitioner-Appellant,

versus

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Respondent-Appellee.

________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida ________________________

(February 20, 2020)

Before HULL, MARCUS and EBEL, ∗ Circuit Judges.

HULL, Circuit Judge:

After a guilty plea, Hector Rosales-Diaz, a federal prisoner, is serving a 10-

∗The Honorable David M. Ebel, United States Circuit Judge for the Tenth Circuit, sitting by designation. Case: 16-17304 Date Filed: 02/20/2020 Page: 2 of 17

year sentence for unlawful presence in the United States after having been

previously removed, in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326(a). Rosales-Diaz does not

challenge his conviction but appeals the district court’s denial of his 28 U.S.C.

§ 2255 motion to vacate his 10-year prison sentence. Based on the record as a

whole and with the benefit of oral argument, we conclude that Rosales-Diaz has

not carried his burden to show that the district court erred in denying his § 2255

motion.

I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

A. Offense Conduct and Guilty Plea

Between 1999 and 2006, Rosales-Diaz, a native and citizen of Mexico, was

convicted of Florida misdemeanor and felony offenses including: (1) grand theft

(motor vehicle); (2) obstructing an officer without violence; (3) driver’s license

violations; (4) possession of marijuana and methamphetamines; (5) reckless

driving; (6) battery; (7) burglary; and (8) leaving the scene of an accident.

Rosales-Diaz also has felony convictions for burglary of an occupied dwelling and

discharging a firearm from a vehicle. See Fla. Stat. §§ 810.02(3)(a), 790.15(2).

On December 9, 2006, Rosales-Diaz was deported to Mexico. At some

point, Rosales-Diaz illegally reentered the United States, and on November 20,

2007, was arrested in Florida for driving on a suspended license.

On March 18, 2008, a federal grand jury charged Rosales-Diaz with being

2 Case: 16-17304 Date Filed: 02/20/2020 Page: 3 of 17

an alien “found to be voluntarily in the United States” after having been previously

convicted of aggravated felony offenses and deported, in violation of 8 U.S.C.

§ 1326(a) and (b)(2). The government filed a notice that Rosales-Diaz faced a

statutory maximum 20-year sentence under § 1326(b)(2) because his Florida

convictions for burglary and discharging a firearm from a vehicle constituted

aggravated felonies under the immigration statutes.

On March 26, 2009, Rosales-Diaz pled guilty. He admitted that he

previously pled no contest to burglary and discharging a firearm from a vehicle in

Florida state court and confirmed that he received a sentence for those crimes. The

district court accepted Rosales-Diaz’s plea.

B. Sentencing in 2009

Rosales-Diaz’s presentence investigation report (“PSI”) assigned him a base

offense level of 8, pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 2L1.2(a) (2008). The PSI increased the

base offense by 16 levels, pursuant to § 2L1.2(b)(1)(A)(ii), because Rosales-Diaz

was previously deported following a conviction for a crime of violence, namely

Florida burglary of an occupied dwelling. Rosales-Diaz received a 3-level

reduction for acceptance of responsibility, pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 3E1.1(a), (b),

yielding a total offense level of 21.

The PSI assigned Rosales-Diaz 26 criminal history points, placing him in

criminal history category VI. A total offense level of 21 and a criminal history

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category VI yielded an advisory guidelines range of 77 to 96 months’

imprisonment. Rosales-Diaz objected to the 16-level increase, arguing that his

burglary conviction was of an unoccupied dwelling and not a crime of violence

under § 2L1.2(b)(1)(A)(ii). At sentencing, the district court overruled Rosales-

Diaz’s objection because the state-court documents indicated that he was convicted

of burglary of an occupied dwelling, which constituted a crime of violence under

that guidelines provision.

At the June 2009 sentencing hearing, the district court accepted the PSI’s

guidelines calculations and advisory range of 77 to 96 months’ imprisonment.

However, the district court sentenced Rosales-Diaz to 120 months’ (10 years)

imprisonment, varying 24 months above the guidelines high end of 96 months (8

years). Explaining his upward variance, the district court said that “[s]ince

becoming an adult at age 18, [Rosales-Diaz has] committed crimes which net him

a criminal history category of 26 points, which is double the number that you need

to qualify for the highest criminal history category, that of six.” The district court

described Rosales-Diaz as a “career criminal” who returned after deportation to

commit crimes, and it rejected his assertion that he came back to the United States

to be with his children. The district court highlighted that Rosales-Diaz had no

regard for the safety and welfare of the community and had no respect for the law.

The district court also cited the need to afford adequate deterrence to

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repetitive criminal conduct and to protect the public from Rosales-Diaz’s future

crimes. In addressing Rosales-Diaz personally, the district court said: “You are a

one-man crime wave. You are a menace to the community. You’re a burglar,

you’re a thief, you assault people. You resist law enforcement’s efforts to

apprehend you. You cause accidents, you leave the scene of accidents.” The

district court reiterated that Rosales-Diaz had a wide range of prior crimes,

including “fleeing the scene of accidents, fleeing from law enforcement, assaulting

people, . . . burglarizing a person’s vehicle, [and] burglarizing a person’s home.”

The district court stated that, while we all make mistakes, Rosales-Diaz had made

too many.

After taking into account both the advisory guidelines and the 18 U.S.C.

§ 3553(a) factors, the district court determined that an upward variance was “more

than in order.” The district court noted that it had seriously considered giving

Rosales-Diaz the statutory maximum of 20 years’ imprisonment because of the

likelihood that Rosales-Diaz would return to the United States after serving his

sentence and being deported back to Mexico. However, the district court

ultimately determined that a 10-year sentence was “more than reasonable in this

case.”

C. Direct Appeal in 2010

Rosales-Diaz appealed only the procedural and substantive reasonableness

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of his 10-year sentence to this Court. United States v. Rosales-Diaz, 367 F. App’x

62, 63 (11th Cir. 2010) (unpublished). In affirming, this Court concluded that

Rosales-Diaz’s 10-year sentence was procedurally reasonable because “the district

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