United States v. Daniel Pacheco-Morales

Opinion

NOT PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

No. 23-1943

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

v.

DANIEL PACHECO-MORALES,

Appellant

On Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania (D.C. No. 1-12-cr-00310-007)

District Judge: Honorable Yvette Kane

Submitted Under Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a)

March 26, 2024

Before: RESTREPO, MATEY, and McKEE, Circuit Judges.

(Opinion filed: April 1, 2024)

OPINION

 This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and, pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7, does not constitute binding precedent.

MATEY, Circuit Judge.

Daniel Pacheco-Morales appeals the District Court’s denial of his motion for compassionate release under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i). We will affirm.

In 2015, Pacheco-Morales pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and heroin, along with one count of distribution of cocaine and heroin. The District Court sentenced Pacheco-Morales to 180 months’ imprisonment, a sentence well- within the low end of the Sentencing Guidelines range. In 2020, Pacheco-Morales filed his first motion for a sentence reduction under § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i). The District Court denied the motion, and we affirmed. In January 2022, Pacheco-Morales filed a second motion for a sentence reduction, which the District Court once again denied.

A year later, Pacheco-Morales filed his third motion under § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i), arguing that a reduction was appropriate because of his health and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The District Court assumed Pacheco-Morales demonstrated extraordinary and compelling reasons warranting a sentence reduction. But the District Court nonetheless denied Pacheco-Morales’s motion because it found that the factors set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) rendered a reduction inappropriate. Pacheco-Morales appealed.¹ Section 3582(c)(1)(A) permits the sentencing court to “reduce the term of imprisonment” if, after considering the factors set forth in § 3553(a), the court finds that

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“extraordinary and compelling reasons warrant such a reduction.” § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i). “[A] grant of compassionate release is a purely discretionary decision,” United States v. Andrews, 12 F.4th 255, 259 (3d Cir. 2021), and we will not disturb a district court’s exercise of its discretion unless we have a “definite and firm conviction that [it] committed a clear error of judgment in the conclusion it reached upon a weighing of the relevant factors,” United States v. Pawlowski, 967 F.3d 327, 330 (3d Cir. 2020) (quoting Oddi v. Ford Motor Co., 234 F.3d 136, 146 (3d Cir. 2000)).

The District Court did not abuse its discretion. The District Court considered possible mitigating factors under § 3553(a) but determined many aggravating factors— including the seriousness of Pacheco-Morales’s offenses, his significant criminal history, his threat to kill a confidential informant, his history as a fugitive, and his recidivism— weighed against an exercise of a discretionary reduction. We cannot say that weighing of the § 3553(a) factors was so unreasonable as to constitute a clear error of judgment.

Accordingly, we will affirm the District Court’s judgment.

Footnotes

1. 1The District Court had jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 3231, and we have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We review the District Court’s denial of Pacheco- Morales’s motion for abuse of discretion. United States v. Andrews, 12 F.4th 255, 259 (3d Cir. 2021).