United States v. Feliciano Diaz-Martinez

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
• Decided: November 14, 2023
• Docket: 22-4292
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

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UNPUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 22-4292

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff - Appellee,

v.

FELICIANO DE JESUS DIAZ-MARTINEZ, a/k/a Alex,

Defendant - Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, at Baltimore. Ellen Lipton Hollander, Senior District Judge. (1:19-cr-00358-ELH-1)

Submitted: January 31, 2023 Decided: November 14, 2023

Before RICHARDSON and RUSHING, Circuit Judges, and TRAXLER, Senior Circuit Judge.

Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.

ON BRIEF: Brent E. Newton, Gaithersburg, Maryland, for Appellant. Erek L. Barron, United States Attorney, Mary W. Setzer, P. Michael Cunningham, Assistant United States Attorneys, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee.

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PER CURIAM:

A jury convicted Feliciano De Jesus Diaz-Martinez of sex trafficking of a minor, in

violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1591(a), (b)(2), (c); enticement of a minor to engage in

prostitution, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b); seven counts of sex trafficking by force,

fraud, or coercion, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1591(a), (b)(1); conspiracy to distribute and

possess with intent to distribute controlled substances, in violation of 21 U.S.C.

§§ 841(b)(1)(C), 846; and two counts of possession with intent to distribute controlled

substances, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1). The district court sentenced Diaz-

Martinez to a downward variant sentence of 324 months’ imprisonment. Diaz-Martinez

appeals, arguing that the nonmandatory conditions of supervised release contained in his

written judgment do not conform to those announced at sentencing and that the district

court failed to properly account for the time he spent in Immigration and Customs

Enforcement (ICE) custody in fashioning its sentence. For the reasons that follow, we

affirm.

We review “all sentences—whether inside, just outside, or significantly outside the

Guidelines range—under a deferential abuse-of-discretion standard.” United States v.

Torres-Reyes, 952 F.3d 147, 151 (4th Cir. 2020) (internal quotation marks omitted). We

first must “ensure that the district court committed no significant procedural error,” such

as improperly calculating the Sentencing Guidelines range, insufficiently considering the

18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factors, or inadequately explaining the selected sentence. United

States v. Fowler, 948 F.3d 663, 668 (4th Cir. 2020) (internal quotation marks omitted). “If

the sentence is procedurally sound, we then consider its substantive reasonableness under

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a deferential abuse-of-discretion standard.” United States v. Williams, 5 F.4th 500, 510

(4th Cir. 2021) (internal quotation marks omitted). “Any sentence that is within or below

a properly calculated Guidelines range is presumptively [substantively] reasonable,” and

that “presumption can only be rebutted by showing that the sentence is unreasonable when

measured against the . . . § 3553(a) factors.” United States v. Louthian, 756 F.3d 295, 306

(4th Cir. 2014).

Diaz-Martinez argues that his sentence is unreasonable because the district court did

not properly account for his time spent in ICE custody during his pretrial detention in

fashioning his sentence. However, in discussing this issue, the district court merely noted

that the Bureau of Prisons makes the final decision as to what credit an inmate receives

toward his sentence, a correct statement of law. See United States v. Wilson, 503 U.S. 329,

333 (1992) (explaining that computation of prior custody credit “must occur after the

defendant begins his sentence,” so a district court cannot award such credit at sentencing).

Furthermore, although the court included the time-served credit in the judgment, it

correctly acknowledged that Diaz-Martinez ultimately “may or may not get credit from

that date.” (J.A. 99). * Finally, the court generally discussed Diaz-Martinez’s otherwise

“unusually long” pretrial detention and the unique challenges posed by this lengthy

detention, suggesting that the court accounted for Diaz-Martinez’s entire pretrial detention

when deciding to vary below the advisory Guidelines range. (J.A. 99-100). Accordingly,

* “J.A.” refers to the joint appendix filed by the parties in this appeal.

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we discern no abuse of discretion in the district court’s consideration of this sentencing

argument.

We further conclude that the district court’s explanation of Diaz-Martinez’s

sentence otherwise reflects a clear and thorough consideration of the § 3553(a) factors and

the parties’ arguments and that Diaz-Martinez otherwise fails to rebut the presumption of

reasonableness afforded his below-Guidelines sentence. Accordingly, his sentence is both

procedurally and substantively reasonable.

In addition to the procedural and substantive requirements of sentencing, “a district

court must orally pronounce all non-mandatory conditions of supervised release at the

sentencing hearing.” United States v. Singletary, 984 F.3d 341, 344 (4th Cir. 2021).

“Discretionary conditions that appear for the first time in a subsequent written judgment

. . . are nullities; the defendant has not been sentenced to those conditions, and a remand

for resentencing is required.” Id. (citing United States v. Rogers, 961 F.3d 291, 295, 300-

01 (4th Cir. 2020)). We review de novo whether the sentence imposed in the written

judgment is consistent with the district court’s oral pronouncement of the sentence. United

States v. Cisson, 33 F.4th 185, 193 (4th Cir. 2022). That is, we “compare[] the sentencing

transcript with the written judgment to determine whether an error occurred as a matter of

law.” Rogers, 961 F.3d at 296 (internal quotation marks omitted).

At the sentencing hearing, the district court began by adopting the mandatory and

standard conditions contained in the presentence report (PSR). The court then announced

that it was adopting four of the special conditions set forth in the PSR, and the written

descriptions of the special conditions included in the written judgment match the language

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of the corresponding recommended conditions in the PSR. Any variation in the court’s

oral pronouncement of these conditions did not amount to a meaningful modification of

the conditions but rather a justification for their inclusion. Furthermore, to the extent that

“the precise contours of an oral sentence are ambiguous, we may look to the written

judgment to clarify the district court’s intent.” Rogers, 961 F.3d at 299. Given that Diaz-

Martinez had notice of the proposed special conditions through the PSR, the adopted

conditions matched those in the PSR, and any potential ambiguity in the oral sentence was

clarified in the written judgment, we conclude that there was no Rogers error.

We therefore affirm the district court’s judgment. We dispense with oral argument

because the facts and legal contentions are adequately presented in the materials before this

court and argument would not aid the decisional process.

AFFIRMED