United States v. Flores-Gonzalez

• Court: Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
• Decided: November 8, 2023
• Docket: 19-2204P
• Status: Errata

Opinion

United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit

No. 19-2204

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Appellee,

v.

EMILIANO EMMANUEL FLORES-GONZÁLEZ,

Defendant, Appellant.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO

[Hon. Francisco A. Besosa, U.S. District Judge]

Before

Barron, Chief Judge, Lynch, Thompson, Kayatta, Gelpí, and Montecalvo, Circuit Judges.

Kevin E. Lerman, Research and Writing Attorney, with whom Eric Alexander Vos, Federal Public Defender, Franco L. Pérez- Redondo, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Supervisor, Appeals Section, and Alejandra Bird-López, Research and Writing Attorney, were on brief, for appellant. Emma A. Andersson, Devi M. Rao, Elizabeth A. Bixby, and Fermin Arraiza on brief for Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice Center, The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, and The Puerto Rico Chapter of the American Liberties Union Foundation, amici curiae. Adam Murphy, Janai S. Nelson, Samuel Spital, Ashok Chandran, Catherine Logue, and Christopher Kemmitt on brief for NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., amicus curiae. Judith H. Mizner, Assistant Federal Defender, on brief for Office of the Federal Defender for the Districts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, amicus curiae. Linda Backiel on brief for Puerto Rico Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, amicus curiae. Gregory B. Conner, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom W. Stephen Muldrow, United States Attorney, Mariana E. Bauzá- Almonte, Chief, Appellate Division, Kenneth A. Polite, Jr., Assistant Attorney General, Lisa H. Miller, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, John M. Pellettieri, Attorney, Appellate Section, and Jenny C. Ellickson, Attorney, Appellate Section, and were on brief, for appellee.

Opinion En Banc

November 7, 2023 The judgment entered in the district court is affirmed

by an equally divided en banc court. See Savard v. Rhode Island,

338 F.3d 23, 25 (1st Cir. 2003) (en banc).

Opinions follow.

KAYATTA, Circuit Judge, with whom LYNCH and GELPÍ,

Circuit Judges, join. On this appeal, Emiliano Emmanuel Flores-

González ("Flores") raises two challenges to his sentence

following his guilty plea to a charge of illegally possessing a

machine gun in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(o) -- first, that he

was erroneously classified as a "prohibited person," and second,

that his sentence was both procedurally and substantively

unreasonable. All members of the panel that first heard this

appeal and all members of the en banc court agree that Flores's

classification as a "prohibited person" under U.S.S.G.

§ 2K2.1(a)(4)(B) was not clear error and for that reason is

affirmed, as more fully explained in the separate opinion that

follows this opinion.

What divides our court is how to rule on Flores's

challenge to the district court's decision to vary upward

eighteen months from the upper end of the guidelines sentencing

range. We explain in this opinion why three members of the court

conclude that the upward variance was within the district court's

discretion.

- 3 - I.

We begin by explaining what the district court did at

sentencing. After hearing from counsel for each party, and

considering the pre-sentencing report of probation, the district

court calculated a guidelines sentencing range of twenty-four to

thirty months. All agree that this calculation was free from

error.

The district court also considered the full array of

sentencing factors set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). In so doing,

the district court began by referencing the government's assertion

that Puerto Rico was a hotspot for violence and stating that "crime

in Puerto Rico far exceeds the known limits on the mainland."

Flores took no objection to this assertion. The district court

then discussed at length its perception that, given the "pervasive"

occurrence of gun crimes in Puerto Rico, the impact of possessing

a machine gun in Puerto Rico was "more serious than that considered

by the Sentencing Commission when it drafted the guidelines." The

court also explained that deterring the "population at large" from

engaging in such behavior was an important factor in sentencing.

The court then continued to discuss the specific

characteristics of Flores and the characteristics of the offense.

The court observed that, at the time of his arrest (at a

McDonalds), Flores had the machine gun loaded with thirty-three

rounds of ammunition, and he possessed an additional thirty rounds.

- 4 - An empty shell casing was also found in the vehicle in which Flores

had been riding at the time of his arrest. While mentioning these

facts, the court did not claim that Flores's offense was more

harmful than "others similar to his." Rather, the court's judgment

was that gun crimes were more serious in Puerto Rico because of

the scourge of violent crime being experienced in the Commonwealth.

The court discussed the harm posed by machine guns, showing a video

of a machine gun assault to illustrate the point. Citing a need

for greater deterrence and punishment than was implicit in the

guidelines range, the court varied upward by eighteen months to

impose a sentence of forty-eight months. It is that variance that

is at issue on this appeal.

II.

We certainly agree that a sentencing judge should focus

carefully on the individual circumstances of the offender and the

offense. The district court did exactly that, and said that it

had done so. It is equally clear, too, that such a focus can

properly encompass the location where the offense occurred, and

that an offense can be seen as more serious (and necessitating

greater deterrence) when committed in a community experiencing a

greater-than-customary incidence of related crime. Our circuit

has so held for well over a decade in as many as twenty-five cases.1

1 United States v. Politano, 522 F.3d 69, 74 (1st Cir. 2008); United States v. Flores-Machicote, 706 F.3d 16, 22-23 (1st Cir.

- 5 - It is also beyond debate that the need for general

deterrence is a lawful consideration in sentencing.

Section 3553(a) expressly commands courts to consider the need "to

afford adequate deterrence to criminal conduct." 18 U.S.C.

§ 3553(a)(2)(B). And it is black letter law that the "criminal

conduct" to be deterred by criminal sentences includes the conduct

of persons other than the defendant, i.e., general deterrence.

See United States v. Pagán-Walker, 877 F.3d 415, 417 (1st Cir.

2017) ("[T]he need for general deterrence is a permissible factor

to consider [in sentencing].") The Supreme Court, too, has been

2013); United States v. Santiago-Rivera, 744 F.3d 229, 232-33 (1st Cir. 2014); United States v. Narváez-Soto, 773 F.3d 282, 286-87 (1st Cir. 2014); United States v. Rivera-González, 776 F.3d 45, 50-51(1st Cir. 2015); United States v. Zapata-Vázquez, 778 F.3d 21, 23-24 (1st Cir. 2015); United States v. Díaz-Arroyo, 797 F.3d 125, 129-30 (1st Cir. 2015); United States v. Pantojas-Cruz, 800 F.3d 54, 57, 59-60 (1st Cir. 2015); United States v. Paulino- Guzman, 807 F.3d 447, 450–51 (1st Cir. 2015); United States v. Bermúdez-Meléndez, 827 F.3d 160, 166 (1st Cir. 2016); United States v. de Jesús, 831 F.3d 39, 43 (1st Cir. 2016); United States v. Figueroa-Quiñones, 657 F. App'x 9, 13 (1st Cir. 2016) (unpublished); United States v. Santa-Otero, 843 F.3d 547, 551-52 (1st Cir. 2016); United States v. Vázquez, 854 F.3d 126, 129-30 (1st Cir. 2017); United States v. Fuentes-Echevarria, 856 F.3d 22, 26 (1st Cir. 2017); United States v. Lugo-Cartagena, 701 F. App'x 6, 11 n.5 (1st Cir. 2017) (unpublished); United States v. Garay- Sierra, 885 F.3d 7, 15-16 (1st Cir. 2018); United States v. Laureano-Pérez, 892 F.3d 50, 52-53 (1st Cir. 2018); United States v. Hernández-Ramos, 906 F.3d 213, 214-15 (1st Cir. 2018); United States v. Severino-Pacheco, 911 F.3d 14, 22 (1st Cir. 2018); United States v. Viloria-Sepulveda, 921 F.3d 5, 10 (1st Cir. 2019); United States v. Miranda-Díaz, 942 F.3d 33, 42-43 (1st Cir. 2019); United States v. García-Mojica, 955 F.3d 187, 193 (1st Cir. 2020); United States v. Díaz-Rivera, 957 F.3d 20, 29-30 (1st Cir. 2020); United States v. Gonzalez-Flores, 988 F.3d 100, 102-03 (1st Cir. 2021).

- 6 - clear on the importance of general deterrence in sentencing. See

Pell v. Procunier, 417 U.S. 817, 822 (1974) ("An important function

of the corrections system is the deterrence of crime. The premise

is that by confining criminal offenders in a facility where they

are isolated from the rest of society, a condition that most people

presumably find undesirable, they and others will be deterred from

committing additional criminal offenses." (emphasis added)).

Our colleagues who write separately claim not to dispute

the foregoing. In other words, they never actually say that a

sentencing judge cannot consider the relative prevalence of gun

crimes in the community in which the defendant decided to commit

a serious gun crime. Instead, they rely on two recent panel

opinions that create out of thin air two procedural limitations

that -- as applied by our colleagues -- effectively eliminate any

ability to use upwardly variant sentences in an effort to help a

community experiencing a high level of gun crimes. See United

States v. Rivera-Berrios, 968 F.3d 130 (1st Cir. 2020) and United

States v. Carrasquillo-Sanchez, 9 F.4th 56 (1st Cir. 2021). We

voted to proceed en banc in order to overrule those panel decisions

to the extent they adopted such limitations. Our colleagues would

instead affirm and apply those limitations in this case.

First, our colleagues would hold that a greater need to

deter crime in a given community cannot serve by itself ("solely")

to support any upward variance. There is absolutely no support

- 7 - for this requirement in the text of section 3553(a) or in any

Supreme Court opinion. And what exactly does it mean? The

district court in this case considered a full range of sentencing

factors, each of which presumably had some potential upward or

downward effect. The court considered the locus of the crime and

the resulting need for greater deterrence "solely" only in the

sense that, but for that factor added to the rest, the court would

have imposed a shorter sentence. This is exactly how sentencing

works. To hold otherwise would simply be a back door way of saying

that a court cannot upwardly vary based on a finding that the

circumstances of the community in which the offense occurred render

the offense more serious and the need for deterrence greater.

As for the second limitation, our colleagues say that

the deterrence needs of a given community cannot support "too much"

of an upward variance. We readily agree. But when one looks at

the mandate our colleagues would issue on remand -- ordering no

variance at all -- it becomes clear that "too much" means anything

greater than zero. Their limitation would render it, effectively,

procedural error for a sentencing court to impose an upward

variance based on community characteristics. We think, instead,

that "too much" in this context more properly means that a variance

imposed because of community characteristics must still meet the

requirements of substantive reasonableness, as we will explain.

But we see no procedural error in the consideration of community

- 8 - characteristics as they relate to section 3553(a) factors,

including, as here, general deterrence.

This effort to enshrine judicially-created limitations

that effectively overturn more than a decade of circuit precedent

and preclude district court judges from providing added deterrence

in aid of a community facing a relatively greater incidence of gun

violence runs headlong into the Supreme Court's warning that "[t]he

only limitations on a court's discretion to consider any relevant

materials at an initial sentencing . . . are those set forth by

Congress in a statute or by the Constitution." Concepcion v.

United States, 142 S. Ct. 2389, 2400 (2023). There is no statutory

or constitutional provenance for the limitations favored by our

colleagues. Nor do they even claim to cite any.

Our decisions allowing sentencing courts to reflect a

community's increased need to deter crime in an upwardly variant

sentence makes especially good sense given the limitations of the

guidelines. The Sentencing Commission recognizes that the need to

deter constitutes an important consideration in calibrating the

length of a sentence. See Rita v. United States, 551 U.S. 338,

347-49 (2007) (explaining that the guidelines are designed to carry

out the sentencing objectives reflected in the section 3553(a)

factors -- including, of course, deterrence). The Commission's

calibration, however, is national, and thus unable to reflect local

- 9 - variation. The guidelines also fail to change with a frequency

that can capture some changes in our communities.2

Our colleagues who would vacate the sentence also say

much about the need for a sentence to be "individualized." Indeed,

their opinion repeats the various forms of the word at least

twenty-five times, plainly implying that their approach to this

appeal is "individualized" while the district court's was not.

They have it backwards. The district court simply

considered and found significant one additional fact about the

defendant and his offense that the guidelines did not take into

account -- his commission of the offense in a community

experiencing a high level of gun violence. As we observed

previously, "community-specific characteristics" within that

district "made [the defendant's] offense more serious and the need

for deterrence greater than that reflected by the Guidelines."

United States v. Politano, 522 F.3d 69, 73 (1st Cir. 2008). In

that respect, it is the guidelines rather than the district court

that paid less heed to the specifics of the offense.

At base, our colleagues' position rests on a policy

judgment that because the guidelines do not account for local

2 Whether a district court can justify a variance such as in this case under Kimbrough v. U.S., 552 U.S. 85, 106-110 (2007), by expressing a policy disagreement with the Commission's one-size- fits-all approach, is not presented on this appeal. Nor was it addressed in Rivera-Berrios or Carrasquillo-Sanchez. See 9 F.4th at 61, n.2.

- 10 - variations in the perceived need for deterrence, those variations

cannot serve as a sufficient justification for treating the

guidelines as advisory. And their repeated reference to general

deterrence as a "questionable" rationale suggests that their

policy judgment runs deep. Whether one agrees with this judgment

is not the point. The point, instead, is that no court of appeals

has the authority to impose -- as policy -- the sentencing

limitations favored by our colleagues. Concepcion, 142 S. Ct. at

2400. Or, as we said previously, "Post-Booker, it is now apparent

that the district court has the discretion to take into account

all of the circumstances under which [the defendant] committed the

offense, including the particular community in which the offense

arose." Politano, 522 F.3d at 74. Our colleagues, by contrast,

would have the district court ignore such an individualized

determination, and instead assume that the offense occurred in a

hypothetical average jurisdiction.

Our colleagues also argue that the added deterrence

needs in Puerto Rico did not justify this sentence because the

defendant had not yet shot anyone or "otherwise added to the

violence in Puerto Rico." Rather, he was "only" found to have

been in a McDonald's parking lot with a loaded machine gun. But

if you want to deter machine gun violence, deterring possession of

machine guns -- particularly by individuals like Flores with no

weapons training -- is perfectly logical. The law, after all,

- 11 - punishes both possession and use, and there is nothing in

section 3553 that bars added deterrence aimed at both. And why

was the defendant carrying a fully loaded gun if not anticipating

a possible need to pull the trigger (and thereby generate even

more spent shells)?

Finally, our colleagues suggest that the belief held by

many district court judges who live in Puerto Rico that Puerto

Rico experiences an atypically high level of machine gun violence

was not "reasonable" or "reliabl[e]." This is a remarkable

assertion, especially given that our court has itself previously

held that "[t]he district court . . . did not err in considering

the problem of gun violence in Puerto Rico and that 'Puerto Rico

is a hot spot for weapons.'" Viloria-Sepulveda, 921 F.3d at 10;

see also United States v. Delgado-Sánchez, 849 F.3d 1, 12–13 (1st

Cir. 2017) ("[Defendant] claims that it was error for the district

court to take note of Puerto Rico's significant problem with gun

violence. Our precedent flatly rejects this argument."). In any

event, this argument is unpreserved. At sentencing, the government

expressly stated in its opening argument that Puerto Rico was a

"hotspot for gun violence." Defense counsel (who also lives in

Puerto Rico) voiced no disagreement at all. The district court

itself then explained that "[t]he impact in Puerto Rico of this

particular offense is more serious than that considered by the

Sentencing Commission." Again, defense counsel raised no

- 12 - objection to the factual assertion implicit in this statement.

Flores cannot challenge the district court's factual description

of conditions in Puerto Rico without at least carrying the burden

of showing obvious error. See United States v. Rondón-García, 886

F.3d 14, 20 (1st Cir. 2018). To the extent that Flores now argues

that the sentencing court procedurally erred because it based its

assessment of community characteristics on its own perceptions

without citing to data, he has "doubly waived this argument"

because he did not raise it below or in his opening brief. See

United States v. Leoner-Aguirre, 939 F.3d 310, 319 (1st Cir. 2019).

Further, even in his belated challenge, Flores does not advance an

argument that this was plain error under the applicable four-part

test.3

In sum, we reject the limitations as fashioned and

applied by our colleagues. We conclude, instead, that an increased

need for deterrence in a given community may (but need not) justify

a variant sentence.

3 "[A] reviewing court may set aside a challenged portion of a criminal sentence if, and only if, the appellant succeeds in showing (1) that an error occurred (2) which was clear or obvious and which not only (3) affected the defendant's substantial rights, but also (4) seriously impaired the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings." United States v. Pabon, 819 F.3d 26, 33 (1st Cir. 2016) (alterations in original) (quoting United States v. Padilla, 415 F.3d 211, 218 (1st Cir. 2005)).

- 13 - III.

None of this means that an upward variance based on

community characteristics will always withstand a challenge on

appeal. First, a defendant can insist that the community

characteristics must be derived from information that is "reliable

and accurate." United States v. Díaz-Rivera, 957 F.3d 20, 27 (1st

Cir. 2020) (quoting United States v. Tavano, 12 F.3d 301, 305 (1st

Cir. 1993)). Second, the community characteristics must be

relevant to the individual defendant or the charged offense. To

put a finer point on it, when the charged offense is possession of

a machine gun, community characteristics regarding the prevalence

of gun violence in the community in which the offense took place

is sufficiently relevant. Third, the sentencing court must

consider all relevant section 3553(a) factors. Finally, any

variance imposed must be substantively reasonable; it must have

both "a plausible sentencing rationale and a defensible result."

United States v. Contreras-Delgado, 913 F.3d 232, 243 (1st Cir.

2019) (quoting United States v. Zapata-Vázquez, 778 F.3d 21, 24

(1st Cir. 2015)). In this way, the reliance on community

characteristics cannot be "too much."

The eighteen-month upward variance imposed in this case

is reasonable under this analysis. During sentencing, the

government stressed -- without objection or challenge -- that

"Puerto Rico is a hot-spot of gun violence." The sentencing judge

- 14 - concurred with that statement, opining that "crime in Puerto Rico

far exceeds the known limits on the mainland. Even the Circuit

Court of Appeals has recognized that." Indeed we have. See, e.g.,

United States v. Narváez-Soto, 773 F.3d 282, 286 (1st Cir. 2014)

("[Violent] crime is a real problem in Puerto Rico."); Zapata-

Vázquez, 778 F.3d at 23 (firearm offenses are pervasive in Puerto

Rico).

Flores possessed the loaded machine gun, additional

ammunition, and an empty shell casing at the time of his arrest in

Puerto Rico. As the district court observed, he had no training

in the safe use of the gun, and did not appear to have the means

to have purchased the gun. The court considered Flores's

acceptance of responsibility, lack of prior criminal convictions,

age, education, circumstances of his arrest for the charged

conduct, and the high rate of violent crime in Puerto Rico and

highly dangerous nature of machine guns. The court confirmed it

had "considered the other sentencing factors set forth in Title 18,

United States Code section 3553(a)." Finally, the district

court's rationale for imposing the upward variance --

"reflect[ing] the seriousness of the offense, promot[ing] respect

for the law, protect[ing] the public from further crimes by

Mr. Flores, [and] address[ing] the issues of deterrence and

punishment" -- is plausible. These concerns are directly related

to the court's clearly articulated observation about the need to

- 15 - deter violent crime in Puerto Rico. The resulting upward variance

of eighteen months, although certainly large, is defensible. The

resulting sentence is one-third the ten-year statutory maximum.

See 18 U.S.C. § 924(a)(2). And looking at the record as a whole

and the district court's clear explanation, "we cannot say that

[this] sentence, though upwardly variant, falls outside the broad

universe of reasonable sentences." United States v. Vélez-Andino,

12 F.4th 105, 117 (1st Cir. 2021). See United States v. Rivera-

Morales, 961 F.3d 1, 20 (1st Cir. 2020) ("[T]here is no one

reasonable sentence in any given case but, rather, a universe of

reasonable sentencing outcomes." (quoting United States v.

Clogston, 662 F.3d 558, 592 (1st Cir. 2011))).

IV.

Given the unfortunate 3-3 split of our court in this

case, it is fair to ask, "what next?" First, the sentence in this

case is affirmed. Savard, 338 F.3d at 25. Second, Carrisquillo-

Sanchez, Rivera-Berrios and Flores-Machicote remain controlling

circuit precedent unless and until a majority in an en banc hearing

or the Supreme Court rules otherwise. Third, whether an upward

variance based on a higher than average rate of gun violence in a

community can be justified as a Kimbrough policy disagreement

remains unresolved.

- 16 - THOMPSON, Circuit Judge, with whom BARRON, Chief Judge,

and MONTECALVO, Circuit Judge, join. The result of today's en

banc decision is that Emmanuel Flores-González's upwardly variant

sentence still stands, even though cases requiring us to

vacate his sentence remain good law — and so (obviously) continue

to bind future panels of this Circuit and the district courts

within it as well.

This pitch-perfect quote by the Supreme Court helps set

the stage (no need to memorize all that we say in this set-up

section, because we will resay and explain things as we go along):

It has been uniform and constant in the federal judicial tradition for the sentencing judge to consider every convicted person as an individual and every case as a unique study in the human failings that sometimes mitigate, sometimes magnify, the crime and the punishment to ensue.

Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 52 (2007) (emphases added)

(quoting Koon v. United States, 518 U.S. 81, 113 (1996)).

No one doubts that federal sentencing is a tough task,

especially in the world of the now-advisory sentencing guidelines

— a manual running many hundreds of pages that district judges use

to orient their thinking. See Molina-Martinez v. United States,

578 U.S. 189, 193 (2016). A lot is on the line "for the defendant,

the victim, and the community." See United States v. Sabillon-

Umana, 772 F.3d 1328, 1330 (10th Cir. 2014) (Gorsuch, J., for the

court). Using suitably reliable information, judges (speaking

- 17 - generally, and per the legal commands in play here) must craft

"individualized" sentences — whether within or without the

proposed guidelines range, though still respecting statutory

minimums and maximums — that are no greater than necessary to

satisfy approved goals like rehabilitation, public protection, and

deterrence (a guidelines range, incidentally, is the sentencing

commission's estimate of a reasonable range of punishment for "each

category of offense involving each category of defendant," see 28

U.S.C. § 994(b)).4 See Gall, 552 U.S. at 50. The takeaway

catchphrase then is that "[f]air sentencing is individualized

sentencing." See U.S. Sentencing Comm'n, Fifteen Years of

Guidelines Sentencing: An Assessment of How Well the Federal

Criminal Justice System is Achieving the Goals of Sentencing Reform

113 (2004) (emphasis added).

While easy to state these rules (as just indicated) can

be hard to apply. But apply them we should — indeed must — in

this appeal by Flores (as we will call him, consistent with Spanish

naming customs).

As a refresher on the facts, a then 19-year-old Flores

pled guilty a few years back to unlawfully possessing — but not

illegally using — a Glock pistol altered to fire as a machine gun.

He had no criminal priors. The district judge calculated his

4Because no statutory maximum or minimum rears its head here, our focus is on sentencing outside those worlds.

- 18 - advisory prison range as 24 to 30 months. And Flores and the

government recommended sentences within that range. But the judge

picked 48 months — 100% above the bottom of the range, 60% above

the top of the range.

Nothing about Flores's own past conduct or the

individual way he committed the crime — other than his having

committed it in Puerto Rico — drove the judge's sizable upward

variance. And this we know from the judge's own words. "The

[c]ourt," said the judge, did "not purport to establish that . . .

Flores'[s] crime itself was more harmful than others similar to

his." Rather, the judge explained, what triggered the major

variance was that Flores's crime fell "within a category of

offenses, gun crimes, that the [c]ourt, considering the particular

situation in Puerto Rico [involving violence], views as more

serious here than if they had occurred in a less violent society."

And before revealing Flores's sentence, the judge played an audio

and video recording of a "recent" machine-gun "massacre" that even

he agreed had no relation to Flores's own specific conduct apart

from his having illegally possessed the gun in Puerto Rico.

Relying on United States v. Rivera-Berríos, 968 F.3d 130

(1st Cir. 2020), and United States v. Carrasquillo-Sánchez, 9 F.4th

56 (1st Cir. 2021), a panel of our court vacated Flores's sentence

as procedurally unreasonable. See United States v. Flores-

González, 34 F.4th 103, 118 (1st Cir.), withdrawn on grant of reh'g

- 19 - en banc, 46 F.4th 57 (1st Cir. 2022). To oversimplify slightly,

the panel so ruled because the judge based the upward variance

solely on the community characteristics of the crime's locale —

without connecting his decision to "a 'special characteristic

attributable either to the offender' or the circumstances of 'the

offense.'" See Flores-González, 34 F.4th at 118 (quoting Rivera-

Berríos, 968 F.3d at 137). A concurring panelist — the author of

our colleagues' opinion (the opinion appearing before the one

you're reading now) — "agree[d] that our most recent precedent

under Rivera-Berríos and Carrasquillo-Sánchez precludes us from

affirming." See id. at 121 (Kayatta, J., concurring) (emphases

added). But he thought that those two decisions wrongly strayed

from the lane identified in United States v. Flores-Machicote, 706

F.3d 16 (1st Cir. 2013), see Flores-González, 34 F.4th at 119

(Kayatta, J., concurring) — a decade-old opinion that lets judges

impose upwardly variant sentences based on community

characteristics, so long as they do not go "too far" by focusing

"too much on the community and too little on the individual," see

Flores-Machicote, 706 F.3d at 24.

Similarly convinced (though offering a different

metaphor) that Rivera-Berríos injected "error into this [c]ourt's

caselaw that has since metastasized," the government asked us to

cure that perceived flaw through en banc review.

- 20 - A majority of then-active judges voted to rehear the

case en banc and vacated the panel's opinion. The en banc court

now divides evenly on whether the district judge erred or not in

varying upward, which leaves the caselaw compelling vacatur

untouched (and binding on future panels) but affirms the district

court's judgment by operation of law — thus dashing Flores's hopes

for a new sentence.

Our colleagues' opinion defends the district judge's

action as within his discretion. But still-governing precedent

dictates the opposite conclusion, as we will explain in the many

pages that follow.

I

We begin by briefly revisiting the central facts and

prior proceedings.5

A

Puerto Rico police agents got an arrest warrant for

Flores on domestic violence and weapons charges. Having heard

that he would be at a local McDonald's, they stopped him after he

went through the eatery's drive-thru. Arresting him, they found

a Glock pistol modified to fire automatically, 63 rounds of

5 Because this appeal follows a guilty plea, we draw the background information from the probation office's presentence report and the transcripts of the relevant court proceedings. See, e.g., United States v. Edwards, 857 F.3d 420, 421 n.1 (1st Cir. 2017).

- 21 - ammunition, and a spent shell casing (among other items). And

this incident led to his being charged federally with unlawfully

possessing a machine gun, to which he pled guilty. See 18 U.S.C.

§ 922(o).

B

We skip straight to sentencing. Adopting probation's

presentence report, the judge (over the defense's objection) set

Flores's base offense level at 20 for possessing the machine gun

as a "prohibited person" because of his self-admitted drug use,

see USSG § 2K2.1(a)(4)(B), but subtracted 3 levels because of his

acceptance of responsibility, see USSG § 3E1.1(a) — for a total

offense level of 17. The judge then pegged Flores's criminal

history category at I, the lowest category (the presentence report

noted that the commonwealth court dismissed the domestic-violence

charges at the preliminary-hearing stage). This left Flores with

an advisory prison range of 24 to 30 months. The defense requested

24 months. The government proposed 30 months.

Directing the parties' attention to the "sentencing

factors" in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), the judge said that gun-related

"crime in Puerto Rico far exceeds the known limits on the mainland"

and that "[v]iolent crime and murders are occurring at all hours

of the day, in any place on the island" — "even on congested public

highways, in shopping centers, public basketball courts, and at

cultural events." And the judge added that "[m]achine guns, like

- 22 - the one . . . Flores possessed in this case, are present

everywhere, obtained by persons, like . . . Flores, who have no

training in the proper use of weapons and who appear not to have

the means to purchase them."

Continuing, the judge stated that he had considered "the

community and geographic factors" like the "high firearms and

violent crime rate" — with "the community" here being "the entire

island . . . because weapons crimes are not limited to one

particular area or region." Also believing — without offering any

reliably confirming evidence — that "[t]he impact in Puerto Rico

of this particular offense is more serious than that considered by

the [s]entencing [c]ommission when it drafted the guidelines," the

judge then noted that "[d]eterrence" — stopping "criminal behavior

by the population at large" — "is an important factor" in the

§ 3553(a) "calculus."

The judge did mention some biographical information

(Flores's earning a "GED" certificate, his "history of using

marijuana," and his Puerto Rico "arrest") and recounted some

details about the offense (the police's confiscating the Glock,

the 63 rounds of ammo, and the spent casing). But the judge

specifically and clearly said that he "d[id] not purport to

establish that . . . Flores's crime itself was more harmful than

others similar to [Flores's]." On the contrary, the judge — in

keeping with his theme — said that Flores's crime came "within a

- 23 - category of offenses, gun crimes, that the [c]ourt[] [(that is,

the judge,)] considering the particular situation in Puerto Rico,

views as more serious . . . than if they had occurred in a less

violent society."

Still focused on Flores's machine-gun "possess[ion],"

the judge remarked that a weapon like that "can fire more than a

thousand rounds per minute which allows a shooter to kill dozens

of people within a matter of seconds." Aside from "bombs,

missiles, and biochemical agents," the judge could "conceive of

few weapons that are more dangerous than machine guns." Machine

guns are "unusual," the judge said, and beyond "a few [g]overnment-

related uses, [they] largely exist on the black market." Wanting

to show "[t]he dangerousness of a machine gun," the judge then

played an audio and video recording of a "recent massacre" at a

Puerto Rico housing project "where six persons were machine-gunned

to death in a matter of seconds." "This," the judge said, "is

what some people in Puerto Rico live with every single day."

Convinced that neither party's proposed sentence

"reflect[ed] the seriousness of the offense, promote[d] respect

for the law, protect[ed] the public from further crimes by . . .

Flores," or "address[ed] the issues of deterrence and punishment,"

the judge imposed a variant sentence of 48 months — 18 months more

than the top of the recommended sentencing range.

- 24 - Asked by the judge if there was "[a]nything else,"

defense counsel objected to the variant sentence as both

"procedurally and substantively unreasonable." Counsel disagreed

with the judge's view that the "guideline[s] do[] not adequately

reflect the possession of a machine gun when determining the

applicable" sentencing range and thought that the judge had not

"adequately consider[ed]" the proper sentencing factors. Counsel

also objected to the use of the audio and video of the machine-

gun massacre. "That video," said counsel, "is completely unrelated

to the facts of this case, does not reflect . . . Flores'[s]

conduct in this case, and —" at which point the judge interrupted,

saying: "It's not supposed to. It's just supposed to show what

a machine gun can do." Counsel responded that he did not believe

"it was necessary" to "play[] . . . the video and audio of that

shooting to demonstrate it when it's already considered within the

guidelines." And counsel called the sentence "substantively

unreasonable" given Flores's "characteristics" and status as "a

first-time offender." But the judge would have none of it.

The post-sentencing "Statement of Reasons" form — which

sentencers complete under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(c)(2) — included the

judge's comment that "the impact of this [kind of weapon] on the

Island is more serious tha[n] that considered by the [s]entencing

- 25 - [c]ommission."6 And under the heading "18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) and

other reason(s) for a variance (Check all that apply)," three boxes

were checked: to protect the public, to deter others from copying

the crime, and to reflect how serious the crime was. Among the

boxes left unchecked was one labeled "Policy Disagreement with the

Guidelines (Kimbrough v. U.S., 552 U.S. 85 (2007)[)]."7

C

From this sentence Flores appealed, raising three main

issues. He first argued that the judge procedurally erred by

labeling him a "prohibited person." He next argued that the judge

procedurally erred by giving too much weight to community factors

and failing to individually design his sentence. And he last

6 Section 3553(c)(2) pertinently says that a judge picking a sentence "outside the [guidelines] range" must provide the reasons for the pick "with specificity in a statement of reasons form." The commission uses the information in these documents "to make recommendations to Congress." See United States v. Morales- Negrón, 974 F.3d 63, 68 (1st Cir. 2020). See generally United States v. Murchison, 865 F.3d 23, 26-27 (1st Cir. 2017) (mentioning that the bureau of prisons also uses this data to "classif[y] and process[] sentenced offenders"). A standing order of the district court provides that probation shall fill out these forms based on the judges' in-court comments and send them to the judges for final approval, see Morales-Negrón, 974 F.3d at 68 — apparently as a way to "streamline" the process, see Standing Order No. 17-205 (Apr. 28, 2017) (adding as well that judges "shall" give the parties sealed copies of these documents on request). 7 Granting Flores's request for access to the statement of reasons, the judge's electronic order says that "the transcript of the sentencing hearing is the official document and sets forth the [c]ourt's reasoning for the sentence imposed." But the fact remains that the judge left the box blank, despite having had the opportunity to check it.

- 26 - argued that the judge substantively erred by imposing such a stiff

sentence on a first-time offender for no other reason than that he

had a machine gun. The panel affirmed on the first issue, reversed

on the second, and did not reach the third. The full court then

granted rehearing en banc, vacating that opinion — a result that

required us to reassess the case from scratch.

II

Before addressing Flores's particular challenges, we

provide some context about the individualized-sentencing

requirement itself — as often "a page of history is worth a volume

of logic." See N.Y. Trust Co. v. Eisner, 256 U.S. 345, 349 (1921)

(Holmes, J., for the Court). So we start with a summary of federal

sentencing, explaining along the way (among other things) how it

went "from total judicial discretion, to virtually none with

mandatory guidelines, and back to advisory guidelines with

discretion for variances and policy disagreements with the

guidelines." See Mark W. Bennett, Addicted to Incarceration: A

Federal Judge Reveals Shocking Truths About Federal Sentencing and

Fleeting Hopes for Reform, 87 UMKC L. Rev. 3, 22 (2018).8

Excuse us if we run a little long here. But the parties

and our colleagues' opinion present a variety of arguments about

8 Former Judge Bennett was a district judge in the Northern District of Iowa from 1994 to 2019. See Biographical Directory of Article III Federal Judges — Bennett, Mark W., Federal Judicial Center, https://www.fjc.gov/history/judges/bennett-mark-w. A

- 27 - the panel decision's approach under the current advisory

sentencing regime. And so understanding what we and our judicial

superiors have and have not said about sentencing will put the

reader in the right frame of mind for the analysis to come. To

give a sneak-peek preview, what follows will make clear that judges

must "individualize" sentences after the Sentencing Reform Act of

1984 (which created the sentencing commission and authorized the

sentencing-guidelines system), just as they had to do before that

statute's enactment. And so it will bring into sharp focus the

question whether an upwardly variant sentence for a machine-gun-

possession offense is "individualized" when based solely on the

level of violent crime in the geographic community where the

offense occurred.9

In the early(ish) days of the Republic, Congress gave

federal judges enormous sentencing discretion. See, e.g., Kate

Stith & Steve Y. Koh, The Politics of Sentencing Reform: The

Legislative History of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, 28 Wake

year before he left the bench, Bennett noted that he had "sentenced more than 4,000 offenders to federal prison." See Addicted to Incarceration, 87 UMKC L. Rev. at 3. 9Note too that because no summary can include every detail and stay a summary, we do not discuss all the jots and tittles of federal sentencing.

- 28 - Forest L. Rev. 223, 225 (1993). These judges, "in most cases,

could sentence anywhere from probation to the statutory maximum

sentence and there was little appellate review" of their decisions.

Addicted to Incarceration, 87 UMKC L. Rev. at 7 (emphasis added);

see also The Politics of Sentencing Reform, 28 Wake Forest L. Rev.

at 226 (stating that "[f]or over two hundred years, there was

virtually no appellate review of the trial judge's exercise of

sentencing discretion"). So in this time of "sweeping" sentencing

authority — described by one respected jurist (the late Judge

Marvin Frankel, the "father of sentencing reform") as "terrifying

and intolerable for a society that professes devotion to the rule

of law" — if an appellate court concluded that the judge imposed

a sentence "within statutory limits," the ruling was "generally

not subject to review." See The Politics of Sentencing Reform, 28

Wake Forest L. Rev. at 228 (first three quotes (citations

omitted)); United States v. Tucker, 404 U.S. 443, 447 (1972)

(fourth and fifth quotes).10

We have relied on Judge Frankel's writings before. 10 See United States v. Foss, 501 F.2d 522, 527 (1st Cir. 1974) (citing Marvin E. Frankel, Criminal Sentences: Law Without Order (1972)). After stints as a litigator and scholar, he served as a district judge in the Southern District of New York from 1965 to 1978. See Biographical Directory of Article III Federal Judges — Frankel, Marvin E., Federal Judicial Center, https://www.fjc.gov/history/judges/frankel-marvin-e. Among other points, he argued passionately that

[c]orrectly understood, the "discretion" of judicial officers in our system is not a

- 29 - 2

Even in that era of wide-ranging sentencing discretion,

reviewing courts did vacate sentences when judges failed to

individualize them. A case in point is United States v. Wardlaw,

decided before the passage of the Sentencing Reform Act and holding

that the district court there had "exceeded the bounds of its

sentencing discretion" by not "individualiz[ing]" the prison

terms. See 576 F.2d 932, 938 (1st Cir. 1978).

Troubled by the drug dealing in Puerto Rico, the district

court sentenced two "mules" (drug carriers) "harsh[ly]" (though

less than the statutory maximums) so "word [will] spread around

that these mules are getting worse treatment than the mule owners

and then they will stop being mules because they have to think

about it twice before they proceed and no one is going to do the

dirty work for [the owners]." Id. at 936. Agreeing that a district

court's "duty to take the individual defendant into account did

not mean [the lower court] could not assess the sentence's presumed

blank check for arbitrary fiat. It is an authority, within the law, to weigh and appraise diverse factors (lawfully knowable factors) and make a responsible judgment, undoubtedly with a measure of latitude and finality varying according to the nature and scope of the discretion conferred. But "discretionary" does not mean "unappealable." Discretion may be abused, and discretionary decisions may be reversed for abuse.

See Criminal Sentences at 84.

- 30 - effects on others, and that general deterrence was a legitimate

factor to be considered in arriving at a sentence," we added a

"but" — "[b]ut always these effects had to be considered along

with the individual circumstances of the defendant." Id. at 938

(emphases added).11 "The court's duty to 'individualize' the

sentence," we continued,

simply means that, whatever the judge's thoughts as to the deterrent value of a jail sentence, he must in every case reexamine and measure that view against the relevant facts and other important goals . . . . Having done so, the . . . judge must finally decide what factors, or mix of factors, carry the day. While the judge's conclusions as to deterrence may never be so unbending as to forbid relaxation in an appropriate case, they may nonetheless on occasion justify confinement although other factors point in another direction.

Id. (quoting Foss, 501 F.2d at 528). And we ultimately ruled

that the "usual individual considerations" — "mitigating factors"

like "defendants' youth, positive presentence reports, and lack of

criminal records, and even such aggravating factors" like "the

large amount of cocaine involved" — "played little or no part in

[the judge's] thinking." Id. at 938-39 (emphasis added). Mincing

no words, we said that "mechanistic" sentencing that steadfastly

11 Deterrence comes in two forms — specific (deterring the defendant from committing crimes after release) and general (deterring others from heading down the same criminal path).

- 31 - snubs "individual" differences will not do. See id. at 938

(quoting Foss, 501 F.2d at 527).

Also error was how the judge "focused to the exclusion

. . . of all else on the assumed impact upon the large dealers who

'run' the smugglers of meting out inflexibly harsh sentences to

their agents." Id. at 939 (emphasis added). Though "judges have

considerable discretion in sentencing," we held that they may

neither "relentlessly pursue at a defendant's cost a single,

questionable theory while simply brushing aside all the other

criteria commonly weighed by the vast majority of sentencing

courts," nor use sentences "chiefly as instruments of retaliation

against other, different criminals." Id. (emphasis added).

And during this era of wide-open discretionary

sentencing, we were not alone in occasionally vacating sentences

because a judge flouted the individualized-sentencing rule by

overly focusing on the perceived need for general deterrence.

Other courts did too, like when a judge had a policy of always

giving maximum sentences for certain crimes. See, e.g., Foss, 501

F.2d at 527 (citing cases from the Third, Fifth, Sixth, and D.C.

Circuits).

Responding (eventually) to reformers' complaints that

federal sentencing (as it then existed) was really "a non-system

- 32 - in which every [district] judge is a law unto himself or herself,"

with a defendant's sentence turning "on the judge he or she gets,"

see Marvin E. Frankel, Jail Sentence Reform, N.Y. Times, Jan. 15,

1978, at E21, Congress passed the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984.

This law aimed to curb "variable sentencing caused by different

judges' perceptions of the same criminal conduct," see United

States v. Kirkpatrick, 589 F.3d 414, 416 (7th Cir. 2009)

(Easterbrook, C.J., for the court), promoting sentencing

uniformity while also ensuring that sentencing stayed

individualized and so tailored to the offender and the specific

offense committed.

To that end, the Sentencing Reform Act set up the

sentencing commission (just "commission" from here on), a non-

elected body within the judicial branch that developed a

sentencing-guidelines regime that remains in place today. See

Mistretta v. United States, 488 U.S. 361, 367-68 (1989). With

these changes, Congress sought (among other things) to channel

sentencers' discretion and reduce sentencing disparities — a

technical phrase describing the indefensibly wide range of

punishments different judges had imposed on similarly situated

defendants (thus raising equal-protection concerns in the minds of

some reformers). See id. at 366-67; Michael M. O'Hear, The

Original Intent of Uniformity in Federal Sentencing, 74 U. Cin. L.

Rev. 749, 761 (2006).

- 33 - "The federal sentencing guidelines are" (as one

commentator pithily put it) "simply a long set of instructions for

one chart: the sentencing table." Frank O. Bowman III, The

Failure of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines: A Structural

Analysis, 105 Colum. L. Rev. 1315, 1324 (2005). Roughly speaking,

a judge scores the crime's base offense level, adjusting for

certain aggravating or mitigating circumstances to get the total

offense level. See USSG § 1B1.1. Next the judge scores the

defendant's criminal record to get the criminal history category.

See id. Turning then to the guidelines' sentencing table, the

judge marks — with fingers (for example) — the total offense level

on the table's vertical line and the criminal history category on

the horizontal line. And "[w]here the judge's finger[s] stop[],

he or she finds" the sentencing range inside the statutory minimums

and maximums. See Albert W. Alschuler, The Failure of the

Sentencing Guidelines: A Plea for Less Aggregation, 58 U. Chi. L.

Rev. 901, 907 (1991).

For years judges working under the Sentencing Reform Act

generally had to pick from the guidelines range. See Koon, 518

U.S. at 108. Free-wheeling discretion was out, though judges were

guided somewhat by factors in § 3553(a) — of which there were and

are seven:

Factor one is "the nature and circumstances of the offense and the history

- 34 - and characteristics of the defendant." 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(1). Factor two is

the need for the sentence . . . (A) to reflect the seriousness of the offense, to promote respect for the law, and to provide just punishment for the offense; (B) to afford adequate deterrence to criminal conduct; (C) to protect the public from further crimes of the defendant; and (D) to provide the defendant with needed educational or vocational training, medical care, or other correctional treatment in the most effective manner.

Id. § 3553(a)(2). Factor three is "the kinds of sentences available." Id. § 3553(a)(3). Factor four is the guidelines. Id. § 3553(a)(4). Factor five is "any pertinent policy statement . . . issued by the [s]entencing [c]ommission." Id. § 3553(a)(5). Factor six is "the need to avoid unwarranted sentence disparities." Id. § 3553(a)(6). And factor seven is "the need to provide restitution to any victims." Id. § 3553(a)(7).

United States v. Correa-Osorio, 784 F.3d 11, 28 n.24 (1st

Cir. 2015); see also Rita v. United States, 551 U.S. 338, 347-48

(2007).

Judges in this era could sentence above or below the

guidelines range in specific cases (known as departures, in law-

speak) — but only if "there exist[ed] an aggravating or mitigating

circumstance of a kind, or to a degree, not adequately taken into

consideration by the . . . [c]ommission in formulating the

guidelines[.]" See Koon, 518 U.S. at 92 (quotation marks omitted).

- 35 - The commission, after all, sets the range with the typical case in

mind — thus ensuring that an offender gets sentenced both

individually and comparably to others who did the same crime (when

nothing about the offender or the crime's commission made either

relevantly different from other perpetrators of the same crime).

And because judges then had to "sentence within the applicable

[g]uidelines range (in the absence of circumstances that justify

a departure)," see United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220, 259

(2005), "the uses that [they] could make of the factors listed in

section 3553(a) were severely circumscribed . . . to preserve the

mandatory character of the guidelines," see United States v. Dean,

414 F.3d 725, 728 (7th Cir. 2005) (Posner, J., for the court) —

which is why we said "guided somewhat by the factors in § 3553(a),"

several lines ago.

The Sentencing Reform Act also erected "standards of

appellate review for certain claims of sentencing error." United

States v. Pho, 433 F.3d 53, 60 (1st Cir. 2006), abrogated on other

grounds by Kimbrough v. United States, 552 U.S. 85 (2007). One

provision (for example) mandated de novo review of guidelines

departures, see Booker, 543 U.S. at 261 — meaning reviewing courts

acted without deference to the district judges' views, see Toddle

Inn Franchising, LLC v. KPJ Assocs., LLC, 8 F.4th 56, 66 (1st Cir.

2021) (explaining what de novo review means).

- 36 - 2

The guidelines are no longer binding thanks to Booker,

which ushered in the new age of federal sentencing (in place at

the time of Flores's sentencing and at present).

Booker said that a mandatory sentencing regime based on

judge-made findings violated the Sixth Amendment's jury-trial

guarantee. See 543 U.S. at 243-45. And Booker fixed that fatal

constitutional defect by erasing two parts of the Sentencing Reform

Act going forward: the one that forced judges to impose sentences

within the guidelines range, and the other that required de novo

review of guidelines departures. See id. at 259.

But despite dropping the guidelines from rules to

advice, Booker still told judges to consider the guidelines during

sentencing and to base their outcomes on the § 3553(a) factors.

Id. at 259-60. That directive gave those factors — "made dormant"

by "the mandatory application of the [g]uidelines" — a brand-new

"vitality." See United States v. Trujillo-Terrazas, 405 F.3d 814,

819 (10th Cir. 2005) (McConnell, J., for the court). See generally

Scott Michelman & Jay Rorty, Doing Kimbrough Justice: Implementing

Policy Disagreements with the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, 45

Suffolk U. L. Rev. 1083, 1095 (2012) (explaining that after Booker

"[m]andatory [g]uideline[s] sentencing was out" and "[t]he seven"

- 37 - § 3553(a) factors "were in").12 And to fill the standard-of-review

hole, Booker told appellate courts to inspect sentences only for

"reasonableness." See 543 U.S. at 261.

Then came Rita.

Fleshing out the advisory-guidelines regime, Rita said

that because the guidelines reflect the commission's bid to

reconcile the § 3553(a) factors in the typical case, so should the

judges' sentencing decisions. See 551 U.S. at 347-48. Thus when

sentences jibe with the guidelines' application of those factors

in the "mine run" of cases, they are "probabl[y]" reasonable (and

reviewing courts "may" presume that within-guidelines sentences

are reasonable). See id. at 351. But if they do not jibe with

Guidelines-based departures still exist after Booker. See, 12

e.g., Irizarry v. United States, 553 U.S. 708, 714 (2008). Although they lead to the same result (a sentence outside the guidelines range), variances and departures get there via different routes. See United States v. Fletcher, 56 F.4th 179, 187 (1st Cir. 2022). A variance is a non-guidelines sentence based on the judge's consideration of the § 3553(a) factors. See United States v. Vixamar, 679 F.3d 22, 33 (1st Cir. 2012). A departure, contrastingly, is a "non-[g]uidelines sentence imposed under the framework set out in the [g]uidelines" — including the departure provisions. See Irizarry, 553 U.S. at 714. See generally Fletcher, 56 F.4th at 187 (noting "that a departure is just a variance by another name" since "there is no departure that could not be justified as a variance," but adding that "we cannot entirely abandon the nomenclature" (quotation marks omitted)). A judge must give the parties "advance notice of the grounds for any contemplated departure." See Fletcher, 56 F.4th at 187-88. But the judge must "also avoid unfair surprise when adopting a variance." See id. at 188.

- 38 - the guidelines, that same probability does not exist (though

reviewing courts may not presume an outside-the-guidelines

sentence is unreasonable). See id. at 354-55.

Judges, Rita added, must explain the reasons for their

chosen sentences — i.e., they must say enough to show the appellate

courts that they "considered the parties' arguments and ha[d] a

reasoned basis for exercising [their] own legal decisionmaking

authority." Id. at 356. Within-guidelines sentences do "not

necessarily require lengthy explanation." Id. But sentences

falling outside the guidelines require that judges "explain why"

they decided not to follow the commission's recommendations. See

id. at 357.

Finally and separately, Rita also made clear that

"[a]ppellate 'reasonableness' review" translates to abuse-of-

discretion review. See id. at 351.

Enter Gall, which further clarified the new advisory-

guidelines scheme.

Booker said that judges are not bound by the commission's

suggested guidelines, even in the mine-run case. But Gall reminded

judges that they must know what the suggestions are (and thus the

ranges recommended for the defendants' sentences in the cases at

hand) before using their discretion. See 552 U.S. at 49. So

judges must first calculate the advisory ranges. See id. And

- 39 - without "presum[ing]" that a guidelines sentence is reasonable,

they must next make a particularized assessment (based on the facts

presented) of the § 3553(a) concerns — considered the hallmark of

"individualized" sentencing — and then explain the reasons for the

selected sentences. See id. at 50; see also id. at 52.

And staying with explanations, Gall nixed any idea that

judges must justify outside-guidelines sentences with

"extraordinary" circumstances. See id. at 47. But judges must

give "serious consideration to the extent of any" deviation "from

the [g]uidelines" and offer "sufficient justifications" for

unusually heavy or light sentences. See id. at 46. "[M]ajor"

guidelines deviations "should be supported by a more significant

justification than . . . minor one[s]," Gall noted. Id. at 50.

Which means that any justification must be "sufficiently

compelling to support the degree of the variance." See id. But

in all cases judges must offer "adequate[]" explanations "to allow

for meaningful appellate review and to promote the perception of

fair sentencing." See id.

Gall also noted that circuit courts must review all

sentences — whether within or without the guidelines — only for

reasonableness under an abuse-of-discretion standard, see id. at

46, and that reasonableness has both procedural and substantive

components, see id. at 51. A sentence is procedurally unreasonable

if the judge "fail[ed] to calculate (or improperly calculat[ed])

- 40 - the [g]uidelines range, treat[ed] the [g]uidelines as mandatory,

fail[ed] to consider the § 3553(a) factors, select[ed] a sentence

based on clearly erroneous facts, or fail[ed] to adequately explain

the chosen sentence." Id. A sentence is substantively

unreasonable if the judge acted too harshly given the "totality of

the circumstances." See id.

On the very day Gall came out so too did Kimbrough, which

highlighted another aspect of post-Booker sentencing discretion:

judges can sentence outside the advisory-guidelines range not only

(as Booker held) because of the nature and circumstances of the

offense but also because of the nature of the guidelines

themselves. See 552 U.S. at 91, 98, 108-10.

Dealing with a much-panned guidelines ratio that equated

1 gram of crack cocaine to 100 grams of powder cocaine, Kimbrough

noted that judges and the commission have "discrete institutional

strengths." See id. at 109. On the one hand, judges better know

the particular defendants before them "than the [c]ommission or

the appeals court[s]" and so are better positioned to apply the

§ 3553(a) considerations "in each particular case." Id. (quoting

Rita, 551 U.S. at 357-58). On the other hand, the commission's

expertise is mainly "empirical" — having as it does the knowledge,

experience, and workforce to analyze data reflecting the combined

experiences of sentencers across the country and the input of

- 41 - different law-enforcement groups. See id. (quoting United States

v. Pruitt, 502 F.3d 1154, 1171 (10th Cir. 2007) (McConnell, J.,

concurring)); see also Rita, 551 U.S. at 349.13 And if the

commission settles on a policy choice for reasons beyond its

expertise, the resulting guidelines may be attacked on that basis.

See Kimbrough, 552 U.S. at 109.

These institutional differences also affect the degree

of deference due a judge's decision to vary. In cases "outside"

the guidelines' "heartland," decisions to vary "may attract

greatest respect." See id. (quotation marks omitted). But in

"mine-run" cases — average cases with no distinguishing

circumstances — "closer review" may be necessary for decisions

"based solely on" a policy disagreement with the guidelines. See

id.

According to Kimbrough, the crack/powder ratio did not

reflect the commission's usual method of using "empirical data and

national experience." See id. The commission had cribbed it from

the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which represented Congress's assumptions

Because judges must take the guidelines "into account when 13

sentencing," see Booker, 543 U.S. at 264, the commission must continually update them to "encourag[e] . . . better sentencing practices" and "uniformity in the sentencing process," see id. at 263; see also Kimbrough, 552 U.S. at 108 (emphasizing that "Congress established the [c]ommission to formulate and constantly refine national sentencing standards"); Neal v. United States, 516 U.S. 284, 291 (1996) (stating that "Congress . . . charged the [c]ommission with the duty to measure and monitor the effectiveness of various sentencing, penal, and correctional practices").

- 42 - about crack's dangerousness — assumptions later proved baseless

and contrary to the commission's own research. See id. at 95-98,

109; see also id. at 111 (noting that the commission itself had

taken the "consistent and emphatic position that the crack/powder

disparity [was] at odds with § 3553(a)"). And adding everything

up, Kimbrough held that because the ratio did not "exemplify the

[c]ommission's exercise of its characteristic institutional role,"

judges abuse no discretion in ruling that that formula "yields a

sentence 'greater than necessary' to achieve § 3553(a)'s purposes,

even in a mine-run case," see id. at 109-10 — judges in other words

can disagree with the guidelines (but not with statutes), though

they must act reasonably in using that power.14

That is certainly a lot to take in. Which makes this a

good time for a recap of certain facets of modern sentencing law

that provide context for addressing the weight judges may give

community characteristics in upwardly varying sentences.

14 When some post-Kimbrough opinions said that sentencers could vary from the guidelines only if the facts of the particular case made their application unjust, the Supreme Court replied that judges could "reject and vary categorically" from the at-issue guidelines "based on policy disagreement with them, and not simply based on an individualized determination that they yield an excessive sentence in a particular case." See Spears v. United States, 555 U.S. 261, 266 (2009) (first quote); id. at 264 (second quote).

- 43 - Operating under the now-advisory-guidelines regime, and

(importantly) considering each defendant as an individual, the

judge starts by computing the relevant sentencing range — a product

of the base offense level, any enhancing or mitigating adjustments

to that level, the criminal history category, and any departures

from the guidelines. See, e.g., United States v. Martínez-Benítez,

914 F.3d 1, 2 n.2 (1st Cir. 2019); United States v. Dávila-

González, 595 F.3d 42, 46 (1st Cir. 2010). At that point the judge

knows the commission-suggested range for the at-issue crime when

committed by a defendant like the one before the court — i.e., a

range missing any specific characteristic of the defendant or the

way he committed the crime not captured by the guidelines

themselves. And after letting the parties make their sentencing

pitches, the judge then decides whether to vary from that range,

using one or both of the following methods: categorically

disagreeing with the suggested range — i.e., balking on a basis

applicable to all defendants, "Eagle Scout[s]" and "street

thug[s]" alike (for example), see United States v. Gully, 619 F.

Supp. 2d 633, 643 (N.D. Iowa 2009); or by making an individualized

appraisal of the § 3553(a) factors — i.e., by considering the

particular characteristics of the defendant and the particular

- 44 - offense conduct, see Kimbrough, 552 U.S. at 108-10; see also Gall,

552 U.S. at 51-52.

To achieve these ends — and also to satisfy the

requirement "that 'the punishment should fit the offender and not

merely the crime,'" see Pepper v. United States, 562 U.S. 476,

487-88 (2011) (quoting Williams v. New York, 337 U.S. 241, 247

(1949)) — the judge may consider any relevant evidence if it has

sufficient signs of reliability and if the defendant had a chance

to rebut it, see United States v. Hernández-Negrón, 21 F.4th 19,

25 (1st Cir. 2021) (declaring that due process requires that a

judge not sentence a defendant on "false or materially incorrect"

information). The judge next decides what term is appropriate

(knowing that a sentence cannot be greater than necessary to

satisfy federal-sentencing imperatives). See United States v.

Jiménez-Beltre, 440 F.3d 514, 518-19 (1st Cir. 2006) (en banc).

The judge then explains the sentence, including any detour from

the range (the reasoning may sometimes — but not always — be

apparent from context). See United States v. García-Carrasquillo,

483 F.3d 124, 132-33 (1st Cir. 2007). And while an "extraordinary"

reason is not required for an outside-guidelines sentence, the

reason must be "compelling" enough to justify the variance (ergo

the bigger the variance the more robust the judge's explanation

- 45 - must be, though there is no "rigid mathematical formula"). See

Gall, 552 U.S. at 47, 50, 51.

We review all disputed sentences for reasonableness

under an abuse-of-discretion standard. See Flores-Machicote, 706

F.3d at 20 (citing Gall, among other cases). And by playing our

part (modest though it is) we ensure that sentencing practices

stay fairly consistent, see Booker, 543 U.S. at 263, and that

variances turn on proper considerations, see Rita, 551 U.S. at

382; see also Flores-Machicote, 706 F.3d at 20 — always remembering

that a sentence must reflect an individualized assessment of the

§ 3553(a) factors through the lens of the particular defendant's

case, see Nelson v. United States, 555 U.S. 350, 351 (2009) (per

curiam) (stressing that the judge "must first calculate the

[g]uidelines range, and then consider what sentence is appropriate

for the individual defendant in light of the statutory sentencing

factors, 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), explaining any variance from the

former with reference to the latter"); see also Booker, 543 U.S.

at 261 (noting that "those factors in turn will guide appellate

courts . . . in determining whether a sentence is unreasonable").

With that and at long last, we return to Flores's case.

In the pages to come we consider his challenge to the judge's

prohibited-person ruling, which does not implicate the history

just recounted about the individualized-sentencing requirement.

- 46 - We then turn to his challenge that does implicate that history,

which targets the judge's reliance on community characteristics

and focuses on the many cases by us about whether and how those

characteristics inform sentencing under the Sentencing Reform Act

and the Supreme Court decisions interpreting it.

III

First up is Flores's claim that the judge's prohibited-

person finding constituted a procedural error.

As Flores rightly notes, a prohibited person in this

context is someone "who engages in . . . regular use" of drugs

"over a long period . . . proximate to or contemporaneous with the

possession of the firearm." See United States v. Caparotta, 676

F.3d 213, 216 (1st Cir. 2012) (quotation marks omitted). Focusing

on the "long period" language, he argues that because he admitted

only to "a few months of drug use," his situation does not fit

this definition. The government counters that the record readily

supports the judge's finding.

We — as well as our colleagues in their opinion — think

the government has the better of the argument.

During pretrial interviews Flores — who was 19 when

nabbed — copped to smoking 4 or 5 marijuana joints daily since he

- 47 - was 17 and to having smoked before his arrest.15 On the eve of

sentencing, however, he claimed in a presentence interview that he

only smoked regularly during the three months before his arrest.

Probation suggested that Flores did this about-face only because

he now realized that he could get a prohibited-person increase to

his sentence. The judge accepted probation's position, thus

triggering clear-error review. For our part, even assuming —

without granting — that using marijuana for three months is not

enough for prohibited-person status and that the late-in-the-game

comment about the three months of marijuana use turns on a

plausible view of the record, we think the judge's view is not

implausible given Flores's earlier admissions about toking daily

for years. See United States v. Marceau, 554 F.3d 24, 30-31 (1st

Cir. 2009) (upholding a prohibited-person increase where, "even

after [a] stay at a drug treatment facility," the defendant "was

unable to remain drug-free" and where he admitted to "smok[ing]

marijuana daily in the days before" his crime). And if "there is

more than one plausible view of the circumstances, the [judge's]

choice among supportable alternatives cannot be clearly

erroneous." See United States v. Dunston, 851 F.3d 91, 101-02

15 Despite being legal for certain purposes in some states, marijuana remains illegal under federal law. See United States v. Ford, 625 F. App'x 4, 7 (1st Cir. 2015).

- 48 - (1st Cir. 2017) (quoting United States v. Ruiz, 905 F.2d 499, 508

(1st Cir. 1990)).

IV

Now for the main event: Flores's claim that the

sentencing judge procedurally erred by giving undue weight to the

frequency of gun violence in Puerto Rico and thus not individually

tailoring his sentence. Before taking that up directly, we review

our precedent bearing on it — with us occasionally commenting on

how this caselaw affects our colleagues' opinion. We then circle

back to respond to the government's and our colleagues' opinion's

specific arguments.

Our first case to substantially address whether and when

community characteristics may guide sentencing under the

Sentencing Reform Act is Flores-Machicote — a felon-gun-possession

case that the government talks up in asking us to affirm Flores's

sentence. Flores-Machicote rejected a defendant's claim that his

upwardly variant sentence had to go because (per the defendant)

the judge failed to treat him as an individual by fixating on

geographic-based concerns — most notably and relevantly, "the

incidence and trend lines of particular types of crime in the

affected community." 706 F.3d at 23.

Flores-Machicote relied on our decision in United States

v. Politano — an illegal-firearms-dealing case holding that judges

- 49 - can "take into account all of the circumstances under which [the

defendant] committed the offense, including the particular

community in which the offense arose." See 522 F.3d 69, 74 (1st

Cir. 2008) (explaining that "the district court expressly

considered the ways in which Politano's firearms offense was more

serious and harmful within this specific community"). But the

judge there did not base the upwardly variant 24-month sentence

(which exceeded the top end of the range by 6 months) solely on

community characteristics and so without regard to the defendant's

specific case. See id. Rather the judge gave individualized

consideration to the defendant's situation beyond the offense's

locale, noting the defendant's "likelihood of recidivism" — which

the "[g]uidelines somewhat underestimate[d] or undercount[ed]" in

his case. Id. And Politano did not itself say much about when if

ever — outside the context of that specific case — community

characteristics could drive a variant sentence. See id.

Flores-Machicote thus marked the first time a panel in

this circuit developed a framework for analysis. Flores-Machicote

(for example) explained that a community characteristic can

"appropriately inform[] and contextualize[] the relevant need for

deterrence," 706 F.3d at 23, which is a designated § 3553(a)

factor. And Flores-Machicote said that a judge need not give each

§ 3553(a) factor equal prominence and so may give deterrence

- 50 - greater weight than other factors more focused on the defendant's

specific conduct or characteristics. See id.

But then (almost in the same breath) Flores-Machicote

held that while judges can rely on geographic-specific concerns

"not specifically tied to either the offender or the offense of

conviction" — like the amount of gun crimes in a broad community

— they cannot "go too far" in emphasizing those points. Id. at 24

(emphasis added). To help clarify the "go too far" concern,

Flores-Machicote noted that a "judge's resort to community-based

characteristics does not relieve him or her of the obligation to

ground sentencing determinations in case-specific factors." See

id. (emphases added and citing Politano, 522 F.3d at 74). Which

is another way of saying that a judge must not "focus too much on

the community and too little on the individual." See id. And

when it comes to variances — even ones based in part on community

characteristics — Flores-Machicote made sure to state that the

judge "should typically . . . root[]" the reasons "either in the

nature and circumstances of the offense or the characteristics of

the offender." See id. at 21 (quotation marks omitted).

Moving then from the general to the concrete, Flores-

Machicote held that by "direct[ing] individualized attention to

the defendant's case" — the "likely recidivism" of this particular

offender played a major role in the sentencing decision (as the

explanation showed) — the judge "did not cross this line" by

- 51 - drawing on Puerto Rico's violent-crime rate in picking the

sentence. See id. at 24 (emphasis added). And so the judge's

choice survived abuse-of-discretion review. See id.

In letting judges rely on community characteristics — at

least to some extent — in varying upward, Flores-Machicote tracked

this Circuit's longstanding rule that a sentence must be

"individualize[d]" rather than "mechanistic" and so cannot rest on

a "questionable theory" of general deterrence to the exclusion of

all else. See Wardlaw, 576 F.2d at 938-39.

And Flores-Machicote is not a one-off in letting

community-crime-rate concerns "inform[] and contextualize[] the

relevant need for deterrence" in a specific case. See 706 F.3d at

24 (emphasis added). As the government and our colleagues' opinion

note, First Circuit caselaw is filled with opinions affirming

upwardly variant gun-case sentences — with community-related

factors appearing front and center in the judges' decisions.

But (a big "but" actually) these decisions (at least

inferentially) — while noting that sentencers can consider a

locale's violent crime rate — also noted (and crucially so!) that

the judges there did explore the defendants' individual

circumstances and "did not centrally rely on community

considerations." See United States v. Robles-Pabon, 892 F.3d 64,

- 52 - 66 (1st Cir. 2018) (emphasis added).16 Our colleagues' opinion

just ignores this aspect of those cases, including ignoring how at

least one decision went out of its way to call Flores-Machicote's

okaying reliance on community concerns "a limited grant of

authority" that a sentencer cannot "stray beyond." See Bermúdez-

Meléndez, 827 F.3d at 166 (emphasis added).

A good example of the many cases that spell trouble for

the government and our colleagues' opinion is García-Mojica. The

defendant there appealed a sentence of 100 months (8.33 years), an

16 To save space, we put the case cites here — listing them from oldest to newest: United States v. Naváez-Soto, 773 F.3d 282, 284, 286-87 (1st Cir. 2014); United States v. Santiago-Rivera, 744 F.3d 229, 231, 232-33 (1st Cir. 2014); United States v. Zapata- Vázquez, 778 F.3d 21, 22-23 (1st Cir. 2015); United States v. Díaz- Arroyo, 797 F.3d 125, 128-30 (1st Cir. 2015); United States v. Paulino-Guzman, 807 F.3d 447, 449, 451 (1st Cir. 2015); United States v. Pantojas-Cruz, 800 F.3d 54, 57, 59-60 (1st Cir. 2015); United States v. Rivera-González, 776 F.3d 45, 48, 49-51(1st Cir. 2015); United States v. Bermúdez-Meléndez, 827 F.3d 160, 166 (1st Cir. 2016); United States v. de Jesús, 831 F.3d 39, 41-44 (1st Cir. 2016); United States v. Figueroa-Quiñones, 657 F. App'x 9, 11-13 (1st Cir. 2016); United States v. Santa-Otero, 843 F.3d 547, 550, 551-52 (1st Cir. 2016); United States v. Fuentes-Echevarria, 856 F.3d 22, 24, 26 (1st Cir. 2017); United States v. Lugo- Cartagena, 701 F. App'x 6, 7, 11-12 (1st Cir. 2017); United States v. Vázquez, 854 F.3d 126, 129-30 (1st Cir. 2017); United States v. Garay-Sierra, 885 F.3d 7, 11, 15-16 (1st Cir. 2018); United States v. Hernández-Ramos, 906 F.3d 213, 214-15 (1st Cir. 2018); United States v. Laureano-Pérez, 892 F.3d 50, 52-53 (1st Cir. 2018); United States v. Severino-Pacheco, 911 F.3d 14, 17, 22 (1st Cir. 2018); United States v. Miranda-Díaz, 942 F.3d 33, 37, 42-43 (1st Cir. 2019); United States v. Viloria-Sepulveda, 921 F.3d 5, 6, 10- 11 (1st Cir. 2019); United States v. García-Mojica, 955 F.3d 187, 190-91, 193 (1st Cir. 2020); United States v. Díaz-Rivera, 957 F.3d 20, 22, 29-30 (1st Cir. 2020); United States v. Gonzalez, 988 F.3d 100, 101-03 (1st Cir. 2021); United States v. Merced-García, 24 F.4th 76, 79, 81 (1st Cir. 2022).

- 53 - upward variance from the guidelines range of 41 to 51 months (3.42

to 4.25 years). See 955 F.3d at 192. The district judge "cited"

Puerto Rico's "problem of illegal weapons." See id. at 193. But

in affirming, García-Mojica noted that the judge also emphasized

the defendant's "pattern of serious weapons offenses in his

particular community." See id. And the judge's "articulation of

these concerns," García-Mojica concluded, justified "additional

deterrence" and more prison time. See id.

The bottom line is that we have long allowed judges to

use community characteristics in sentencing. But even Flores-

Machicote warned them against "go[ing] too far" (a warning retold

many times since). Mindful of that message, all the just-listed

cases held that each judge there did not go "too far" in using

community characteristics to inform the upward-variance decision.

And as the government also notes, not every precedent

addressing community characteristics is of the affirming sort.

Another case line of ours has vacated upwardly variant sentences

premised on the kind of community characteristics considered

permissible in the other case line. See Carrasquillo-Sánchez, 9

F.4th at 60-62; United States v. García-Pérez, 9 F.4th 48, 52-55

(1st Cir. 2021); Rivera-Berríos, 968 F.3d at 136-37; United States

v. Ortiz-Rodríguez, 789 F.3d 15, 18-19 (1st Cir. 2015). We found

error there because the judges plainly based their rulings on

community-centered concerns rather than on individualized

- 54 - assessments of each defendant's circumstances. See Carrasquillo-

Sánchez, 9 F.4th at 60-62; García-Pérez, 9 F.4th at 52-55; Rivera-

Berríos, 968 F.3d at 136-37; Ortiz-Rodríguez, 789 F.3d at 18-19.

Rivera-Berríos — a simple gun-possession case, "a non-

violent and victimless crime," see 968 F.3d at 135 — is a leading

exemplar. In picking an above-guidelines sentence — which (to

remind) requires a heightened explanation — the Rivera-Berríos

judge apparently "relied on nothing beyond the mere fact that the

offense of conviction involved a machine gun." See id. That, in

other words, was the "sole factor upon which [he] relied as the

basis for the upward variance." Id. at 136 (emphasis added). But

the "guideline[s]" already figured that factor into the sentencing

"calculus," Rivera-Berríos said. Id. "And," Rivera-Berríos

noted, "the record" lacked "any basis for giving that factor extra

weight." Id.

Discussing "deterrence and punishment," the Rivera-

Berríos judge did say what he thought Puerto Rico's crime trends

were. See id. at 136-37. But "[u]nmoored from any individual

characteristics of either the offender or the offense of

conviction," the judge's community-centric concerns could not

"serve as building blocks for an upward variance." See id. at

137. And Rivera-Berríos added that — even with his many

"institutional" advantages (including being perfectly positioned

to consider the particularities of each individual case), see

- 55 - Kimbrough, 552 U.S. at 109 — the judge did not identify a "special

characteristic attributable either to the offender or to the

offense" (beyond that it occurred in Puerto Rico) that "remove[d]"

the "case from the mine-run" (and neither did the record), see

Rivera-Berríos, 968 F.3d at 137. So Rivera-Berríos vacated and

remanded for resentencing.

Our colleagues' opinion accuses us of plucking "out of

thin air" the idea that deterrence "cannot serve by itself

('solely') to support any upward variance." But that idea comes

straight from the variance-vacating decisions like Rivera-Berríos,

as just shown, see also Carrasquillo-Sánchez, 9 F.4th at 60-61 —

decisions that faithfully applied existing law, see Rivera-

Berríos, 968 F.3d at 137 (applying (among other cases) Flores-

Machicote, 706 F.3d at 21). And these variance-vacating opinions

remain very much alive and controlling, having survived this en

banc (because of the 3-3 split) fully intact. This idea — we

cannot stress enough — also comes straight from the individualized-

sentencing requirement that the Sentencing Reform Act itself

imposes.

- 56 - B

Helpfully, the parties share some common ground — not

only about the judge's sentencing rationale but also about how the

sentence relates to our Circuit's precedent as it currently stands.

Regarding the judge's sentencing rationale, the parties

agree that the judge relied exclusively on community

characteristics in varying upward from the guidelines. We say

this because — using Rivera-Berríos lingo — they agreed during en

banc oral argument that the judge failed to draw a "case-specific

nexus" between the community characteristics and Flores's

situation, beyond (of course) his machine-gun possession. And we

agree with them about this — given the judge's explicit statements

that

• Flores's offense was not "more harmful than other[] similar"

offenses;

• the mass-shooting audio and video had nothing to do with

Flores's "conduct in this case"; and

• the variance came about because Flores's crime fit "within a

category of offenses, gun crimes, that the [c]ourt,

considering the particular situation in Puerto Rico, views as

- 57 - more serious here than if they had occurred in a less violent

society."17

Taken at face value, the judge's words and actions suggest

that he would vary upward as much as he did here (and perhaps more)

for every gun-crime offender in Puerto Rico (at least absent

mitigating circumstances not present here), simply because he

thinks Puerto Rico is awash in gun violence — without ever tying

the variance's expected effects to the specifics of each offender

(his comments arose in discussing the § 3553(a) factors, not in

discussing any Kimbrough-style policy disagreement; remember how

he left the "Policy Disagreement with the Guidelines (Kimbrough v.

U.S., 552 U.S. 85 (2007)" box blank on the written statement of

reasons).

Regarding our precedent, the parties agree that Rivera-

Berríos and its successors counter the judge's view that community

17 To spend a few more minutes on the judge's not-more-harmful-

than-other-similar-crimes comment: The record does not undercut it. Indeed the facts actually are "entirely consistent with simple possession of a machine gun." See Rivera-Berríos, 968 F.3d at 133, 135 (ruling that a Glock with 18 rounds and a detached magazine was not inconsistent with simple possession); García-Pérez, 9 F.4th at 54 (similar, involving a Glock with 65 rounds and 3 magazines). And no contrary inference can be properly drawn. "[W]hile 'a court's reasoning can often be inferred by comparing what was argued by the parties or contained in the pre- sentence report with what the judge did,' such inferences must be anchored in 'what the judge did.'" Carrasquillo-Sánchez, 9 F.4th at 62 (quoting Jiménez–Beltre, 440 F.3d at 519); see also García- Pérez, 9 F.4th at 55. And what the judge did here was make explicit that he was not relying on the fact that "Flores'[s] crime itself was more harmful than others similar to his."

- 58 - factors alone justified the upward variance sentence here —

requiring us to vacate if the Rivera-Berríos family of cases stays

good law. And we agree with them on that point too.

But that is where the consensus ends. Convinced that

Rivera-Berríos and its like are out of step with controlling law,

the government asks us to affirm Flores's sentence — despite the

judge's exclusive reliance on community characteristics to support

the upward variance. Said differently, the government wants us to

hold that Rivera-Berríos and cases following it wrongly vacated

upward variances arising from their exclusive reliance on

community characteristics.

We start with the government's claim — apparently

seconded by our colleagues' opinion — that we must affirm Flores's

prison term because judges enjoy "broad" sentencing "discretion."

A huge flaw with that theory is that discretion is not

code for anything goes, see Igartúa-De La Rosa v. United States,

417 F.3d 145, 149 (1st Cir. 2005) (en banc) — and so is not of

itself a reason to affirm, as our review of the history of federal

sentencing reveals. "Discretionary decision-making does not mean

standardless decision-making," to state the obvious. See Kearney

v. Standard Ins. Co., 175 F.3d 1084, 1105 (9th Cir. 1999)

(Fernandez, J., dissenting) (citing Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx

Corp., 496 U.S. 384, 405 (1990)); see also Nken v. Holder, 556

- 59 - U.S. 418, 434 (2009). A familiar example is a high school hockey

"referee[], whose game calls are unappealable" but who "do[es] not

act in a standardless world." See Kearney, 175 F.3d at 1105

(Fernandez, J., dissenting).

Even in the pre-guidelines days — when sentencers had

far more discretion than now, with "similar offenders" doing

"similar offenses" getting "different sentences" from "the same

judge on different days, different judges on different days,

different judges on the same day, and different judges in different

jurisdictions," see Richard Singer, In Favor of "Presumptive

Sentences" Set by a Sentencing Commission, 24 Crime & Delinq. 401,

402 (1978) — we still saw a need to pump the brakes. Consistent

with the age-old sentencing tradition that considers each offender

as an individual, Wardlaw could not have been more emphatic (as we

said before, so the following quotes should be familiar). While

"general deterrence" is a "legitimate" sentencing goal, Wardlaw

held that judges abuse their discretion if they

"'mechanistic[ally]'" conclude that certain classes of crime

"invariably deserve[]" certain kinds of punishment. See 576 F.2d

at 938 (quoting Foss, 501 F.2d at 527). Sentencers "holding such

fixed ideas [are] presumably closed to individual mitigating

factors." See id. (quoting Foss, 521 F.2d at 527). So they must

"always" consider deterrence together with the defendant's

"individual circumstances," avoiding the use of "questionable

- 60 - assumption[s]," and resisting any temptation to "view[]" sentences

"chiefly as instruments of retaliation against other, different

[defendants]." See id. at 938-39. Tellingly, neither the

government nor our colleagues' opinion cites — let alone

distinguishes — Wardlaw.

Echoes of Wardlaw's caution still linger in our post-

guidelines variance opinions, whether the opinions are affirming

or vacating variances. And while "[t]he allowable band of

[guidelines] variance is greater" after Booker,

intellectual discipline remains vital. "[A] motion to [a court's] discretion is a motion, not to its inclination, but to its judgment; and its judgment is to be guided by sound legal principles."

See Kirkpatrick, 589 F.3d at 416 (quoting United States v.

Burr, 25 F. Cas. 30, 35 (C.C.D. Va. 1807) (Marshall, C.J.))

(emphases added and remaining alterations by Kirkpatrick).

Our point is that neither the government nor our

colleagues' opinion can simply invoke "broad" sentencing

"discretion" (or the like) and declare victory. The issue to be

resolved is whether judges can exercise discretion in a way that

gives as much and as exclusive weight to community characteristics

as Flores's judge gave them in varying upward.

D

Citing Politano, Flores-Machicote, Viloria-Sepulveda,

Zapata-Vázquez, de Jesús, and Pantojas-Cruz, the government

- 61 - separately hints that some First Circuit cases already hold that

sentencers can rely solely on community concerns to vary upward —

without having to root sentences in some characteristic traceable

to the criminal or the crime. This is the same flavor of argument

that our colleagues' opinion seemingly makes. Anyway, the

government continues that stray decisions like Rivera-Berríos

botched matters by slighting them. So it seems the government

wants us to affirm those earlier rulings and make clear that

Rivera-Berríos and cases of its type wrongly deviated from binding

First Circuit precedent permitting such exercises of sentencing

This argument is unconvincing.

The cases hyped by the government and our colleagues'

opinion — while recognizing that sentencers may "take into account

the characteristics of the community in which the crime took place"

— themselves hold that judges must not "go too far" (or similar

words). See Zapata-Vázquez, 778 F.3d at 23-24 (emphasis added and

quotation marks omitted); see also Viloria-Sepulveda, 921 F.3d at

10-11; de Jesús, 831 F.3d at 41-44; Pantojas-Cruz, 800 F.3d at 59-

60; Flores-Machicote, 706 F.3d at 23-24; Politano, 522 F.3d at 73-

74. And also much like Rivera-Berríos and its heirs, the

government's and our colleagues' opinion's preferred cases also

hold that judges go "too far" when they "focus too much on the

community and too little on the individual" (or similar language).

- 62 - See Flores-Machicote, 706 F.3d at 24; see also Viloria-Sepulveda,

921 F.3d at 10-11; de Jesús, 831 F.3d at 41-44; Pantojas-Cruz, 800

F.3d at 59-60; Politano, 522 F.3d at 73-74. Importantly too, none

of these cases relied solely on community characteristics in

varying upward. See Flores-Machicote, 706 F.3d at 24 (explaining

that the judge also relied on a finding of "likely recidivism");

Viloria-Sepulveda, 921 F.3d at 9-11 (explicating that the judge

relied on a finding based on images on the defendant's phone that

the defendant was "associat[ed] with violent and illegal

conduct"); de Jesús, 831 F.3d at 43 (clarifying that the judge

"use[d] the Puerto Rican crime rate as one of several integers");

Pantojas-Cruz, 800 F.3d at 60 (saying that the judge also relied

on a finding that a local court had found "probable cause against

[the defendant] for a murder committed with the weapon he was

[federally] charged with possessing"); Politano, 522 F.3d at 74

(noting that the judge relied on the fact that the defendant had

"more encounters with . . . law enforcement than [were] countable"

and was likely to "recidiv[ate]").

So we see no reason to hold that our pre-Rivera-Berríos

decisions already let judges vary upward in gun-possession cases

based solely on a concern about the crime rate in a community as

big as Puerto Rico when that concern is "unmoored" from any

offender or offense-specific characteristic (as was the case in

Rivera-Berríos and is the case here).

- 63 - E

Additionally but relatedly, the government claims that

Rivera-Berríos and like opinions "conflict with" Flores-Machicote

itself and so should not be relied on. This is a centerpiece

feature of the government's efforts here (above we previewed how

the government predicated its en banc petition on this "conflict"

notion).

The suggestion is off base, largely for reasons we have

already explained.

Both groups of cases — variance-affirming cases like

Flores-Machicote and variance-vacating cases like Rivera-Berríos

— hold that judges can consider community-based concerns in

sentencing. See Flores-Machicote, 706 F.3d at 22-23; Rivera-

Berríos, 968 F.3d at 136; Carrasquillo-Sánchez, 9 F.4th at 59-60.

And both groups also hold that judges can abuse their discretion

by focusing "too much on the community and too little on the

individual." See Flores-Machicote, 706 F.3d at 24; Rivera-

Berríos, 968 F.3d at 136-37; Carrasquillo-Sánchez, 9 F.4th at 59-

63.18

Our colleagues' opinion also accuses us of pulling the "too 18

much" restriction out of the sky. But the reader can see that that limitation comes from our caselaw. Pointing to the conclusion at our opinion's end — that we would vacate Flores's sentence and remand for resentencing within the advisory prison range of 24 to 30 months, effectively barring any variance here, see section V — our colleagues' opinion also thinks that we think that any variance "greater than zero" is "too much" in any case. But that is simply

- 64 - The question then is whether a sentence like Flores's

focused too much on the community and too little on the individual.

But regrettably for the government, Flores-Machicote does not

answer that question because it had to focus on a different one —

whether judges can consider the perceived ineffectiveness of local

courts and local violent-crime rates to "inform[] and

contextualize[] the relevant need" for general deterrence in

varying upward (which again the judge did after also emphasizing

the defendant's significant criminal history and finding a

likelihood of recidivism). See 706 F.3d at 23-24.

F

Still thinking that Flores's sentence would prevail

under our pre-Rivera-Berríos cases, the government lists decisions

saying that sentencers need not give every § 3553(a) factor equal

billing — thus allowing them to emphasize community concerns (like

general deterrence) over individual ones (like a defendant's

background). And from there the government protests that we must

rein in cases like Rivera-Berríos (what with their supposedly

wayward approach) and affirm Flores's sentence, because there is

no way to square Rivera-Berríos's analysis with cases of ours

incorrect. We do not question any of our variance-affirming precedents. And we would have a within-range sentence in this matter because the government proposed one below, plus the judge thought Flores's case was not more harmful than others like his.

- 65 - saying that general-deterrence concerns may support an upward

variance.

Color us unpersuaded.

The very decisions the government cites — after saying

that sentencers "need not afford equal weight to each [§ 3553(a)]

factor in a given case" — hold that judges "go too far" (there is

that phrase again) if they overemphasize "community-based" factors

at the cost of "case-specific" ones (or words to the same effect).

See Zapata-Vázquez, 778 F.3d at 24 (emphasis added and quoting

Flores-Machicote, 706 F.3d at 23-24); see also Viloria-Sepulveda,

921 F.3d at 10-11; de Jesús, 831 F.3d at 41-44; Pantojas-Cruz, 800

F.3d at 59-60; Politano, 522 F.3d at 73-74. And again none of

those decisions sanctioned upward variances centered solely on a

finding that a community characteristic called for extra

deterrence — as none addressed upward variances based on such a

singular ground.

G

Having rejected the notion that our pre-Rivera-Berríos

cases require that we affirm Flores's sentence, we now turn to the

government's claim that the panel here and the panels in the

Rivera-Berríos class of cases gaffed things because the challenged

judges actually "individualized" the sentences and so acted in a

procedurally reasonable way. Our colleagues' opinion also claims

- 66 - that Flores's judge used an "individualized" approach. As support,

the government and our colleagues' opinion note the judge mentioned

the § 3553(a) considerations (including some mitigating facts) but

decided the need to deter violent gun crime in Puerto Rico

generally (itself a § 3553(a) concern) was so important that it

alone called for a substantially higher sentence than the

guidelines suggested. And the government and our colleagues'

opinion also say or imply that the judge focused on generally

deterring gun violence only in the community where Flores chose to

commit the crime, thus making the sentence individualized.

Supreme Court decisions cut against their positions.

As the high Court has been at pains to stress,

particularized facts about the offender matter greatly in

sentencing under the Sentencing Reform Act. See, e.g., Gall, 552

U.S. at 54 (stating that "the unique facts" of the defendant's

situation supported the judge's decision to give a below-

guidelines sentence). See generally Concepción v. United States,

142 S. Ct. 2389, 2395 (2022) (repeating that "a judge at sentencing

considers the whole person before him or her 'as an individual'"

(quoting Koon, 518 at 113)). And when it comes to the § 3553(a)

factor-weighing, the Court has also been at pains to note that

sentencers are "in a superior position to find facts and judge

their import" in deciding the most appropriate sentence for a given

defendant, because they "see[] and hear[] the evidence, make[]

- 67 - credibility determinations, ha[ve] full knowledge of the facts and

gain[] insights not conveyed by the record." See Gall, 552 U.S.

at 51 (quotation marks omitted). Which gives them "access to, and

greater familiarity with, the individual case and the individual

defendant before [each of them] than the [c]ommission or the

appeals court," see id. at 51-52 (emphases added and quoting Rita,

551 U.S. at 357-58) — something that ensures that "the

punishment . . . suit[s] not merely the offense but the individual

defendant," see Wasman v. United States, 468 U.S. 559, 564 (1984)

(emphasis added).

Given these differing roles, the Court has stressed that

a judge must always conduct an "individualized assessment" based

on the facts presented. Gall, 552 U.S. at 50. And the Court has

also stressed that varying from the commission-selected range

risks creating a disparity between the defendant and others with

similar records and offenses, because that range is the one the

commission (exercising its own institutional strengths) decided

"might achieve § 3553(a)'s objectives" in mine-run cases. See

Rita, 551 U.S. at 350-51; accord Kirkpatrick, 589 F.3d at 415

(noting that "[w]henever a court gives a sentence substantially

different from the [g]uidelines' range, it risks creating

unwarranted sentencing disparities . . . for most other judges

will give sentences closer to the norm," and adding that "[t]hat's

a major reason why substantial variances from the . . .

- 68 - [c]ommission's recommendations require careful thought" (citing

Gall, 552 U.S. 38; Spears, 129 S. Ct. 840; Nelson, 129 S. Ct.

890)). Which is why the Sentencing Reform Act requires that when

judges sentence outside the guidelines range, they must provide a

"justification" based on their "individualized assessment" that is

"sufficiently compelling to support the degree of the variance."

Gall, 552 U.S. at 50; see also Nelson, 555 U.S. at 351.

Flashing back again to the pre-guidelines years, we know

that our court and others said that "[i]n each case, a criminal

sentence must reflect an individualized assessment of a particular

defendant's culpability rather than a mechanistic application of

a given sentence to a given category of crime." See United States

v. Barker, 771 F.2d 1362, 1365 (9th Cir. 1985) (citing Williams,

337 U.S. at 247; Foss, 501 F.2d at 527; and Wardlaw, 576 F.2d at

938). So (for instance) our Wardlaw opinion held that giving

"mules" harsher sentences based on an "unbending" and

"questionable" notion that it would force "mule owners" to do

"dirty work" that would lead to their arrest was not reasonable

because it was not "individualized." See 576 F.2d at 936, 937,

938 (citing Foss, 501 F.2d at 527). And similarly, the Ninth

Circuit's Barker opinion held that "the desire to stem the tide of

marijuana smuggling through the deterrent effect" on other would-

be smugglers could not alone serve as the judge's reason for

imposing a five-year sentence on drug smugglers (instead of the

- 69 - government's recommended 18-month sentence). See 771 F.2d at 1367-

69.

Barker rightly said that the "desire to 'send a message'

through sentencing [is not] inappropriate per se." See id. at

1368. But Barker also rightly held that message-sending is

"subject to limitation" in that judges must always "balance[]" it

in light of the defendant's individual circumstances. See id. at

1369. That is because

[c]entral to our system of values and implicit in the requirement of individualized sentencing is the categorical imperative that no person may be used merely as an instrument of social policy, that human beings are to be treated not simply as means to a social end like deterrence, but also — and always — as ends in themselves.

Id. at 1368-69; accord Concepción, 142 S. Ct. at 2399.

Quoting us out of context, our colleagues' opinion says

that we believe "general deterrence [is] a 'questionable'

rationale." Hardly. We know as well as anyone that general

deterrence is a relevant sentencing factor. And our "questionable"

quote actually comes from Wardlaw, where we doubted that the

district court's specific mules-based punishment theory would

achieve general deterrence.

True to first principles, we have never affirmed an

upward variance like Flores's — one for a firearms-possession crime

and powered just by a locale's high violent-crime rate, with no

- 70 - judge-made finding tying the offender and his offense to that

community characteristic through his means of committing the

offense. And when we asked the government's lawyer at oral

argument whether he knew of any gun-possession case outside this

Circuit where the court had, counsel said he knew of no such case.

Our research has not turned up one either.

Against this background, we cannot accept the claim that

the judge based Flores's variant sentence on an individualized

assessment or used "community characteristics" only to

"contextualize and inform" the "relevant" need for general

deterrence in Flores's individual case. See Flores-Machicote, 706

F.3d at 23-24. No one can doubt (at least no one should doubt)

that the sentence rests exclusively on a general-deterrence

rationale that — because the judge tied it to Puerto Rico's

violent-crime rate — would be decisive in any machine-gun-

possession case prosecuted there (absent mitigating circumstances

not present here). Yet as we said, the judge flatly stated that

Flores's possession was no more "harmful than others similar to

his." And the judge explicitly declined finding that Flores's

"conduct in this case" was associated with the community-based

gun-violence concern that alone drove the upward variance. So the

judge made no finding that Flores is more associated with or more

prone to commit the kind of violence in the community requiring

- 71 - deterrence than others possessing a gun anywhere in the country.19

And as a result we conclude that the judge — based on his own

explanation — varied upward by "focus[ing] too much on the

community and too little on the individual." See id.

As our colleagues' opinion notes, the record shows that

officers found ammo and a spent casing in the car Flores was in at

the time of his arrest. If the judge had made not-clearly-

erroneous findings that Flores likely used the gun or otherwise

added to the violence in Puerto Rico, the question before us might

be different — as likely would the total offense level and thus

the guidelines range in his case, see USSG § 2K2.1(b). Our

analysis might also change if the judge had factored in how (as

our colleagues' opinion notes) Flores got arrested with a machine

gun at a McDonald's parking lot. But the inescapable truth is

that the judge made no such findings (or anything similar) and

instead found Flores's offense no more harmful than similar

offenses, a finding neither the government nor our colleagues'

opinion says is clearly erroneous.

That the judge also recognized other § 3553(a) factors

favoring Flores does not alter our conclusion. Neither we nor the

19 For that reason we reject the government's claim that Flores's case — where the geographic area covers all of Puerto Rico — is similar to one where a judge might find a machine-gun- possessing defendant culpable because he possessed it on or near school grounds or another sensitive setting.

- 72 - Supreme Court has ever held that a judge satisfies the procedural

duty to explain why a sentence fits the particular offender simply

by noting mitigating factors exist in a particular case. See Rita,

551 U.S. at 356-58. That is especially so where "the judge imposes

a sentence outside" the range identified for the mine-run case.

See id.; see also Rivera-Berríos, 968 F.3d at 136–37 (noting that

"the mere fact that the court considered all of the relevant

factors cannot justify an upward variance when those factors,

whether taken singly or in combination, do not form a permissible

basis for an upward variance" (citing Flores-Machicote, 706 F.3d

at 21)); accord Chavez-Meza v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 1959,

1965 (2018) (citing Rita, 551 U.S. at 357).20

Do not get us wrong. We are not saying judges would be

focusing too much on the community and too little on the individual

if they deemed a defendant more culpable than the typical offender

because he did the crime with some intent to go to a particular

area and act in a way that exacerbated the conduct requiring

deterrence. A variance in that scenario would be individualized

precisely because it would be "grounded" in a finding reflecting

the individual's heightened culpability in his particular case.

20 While we give "some weight" to a judge's statement about having "considered" the § 3553(a) factors, Dávila-González, 595 F.3d at 49 (citing United States v. Morales–Machuca, 546 F.3d 13, 26 (1st Cir. 2008)), we still must decide whether the judge applied them in a reasonable way.

- 73 - And that is so because it would represent a finding that the

defendant was "associat[ed] with the violent and illegal conduct"

plaguing the community. See Viloria-Sepulveda, 921 F.3d at 9

(citing United States v. Acevedo-Lopez, 873 F.3d 330, 340 (1st

Cir. 2017); United States v. Quiñones-Meléndez, 791 F.3d 201, 205

(1st Cir. 2015); and United States v. Gallardo-Ortiz, 666 F.3d

808, 815 (1st Cir. 2012)).

Consider Viloria-Sepulveda. In that machine-gun-

possession case, we affirmed an upward variance because the judge

committed no clear error in finding that photos on a defendant's

cell phone — showing him and others carrying guns — "signaled his

past participation in or propensity for illegal or violent

activities involving drugs and firearms" in Puerto Rico. Id. And

we notably said as well that the judge's finding helped

"'contextualize[]'" his expressed concern about the "pervasiveness

of guns and the level of violence" there, such that we could rule

that he did not "overemphasize these community concerns at the

expense of individual ones." See id. at 10 (quoting Flores-

Machicote, 706 F.3d at 23). Compare the situation in Viloria-

Sepulveda to the situation here and the difference is night and

day.

We must add that this approach — basing a variance on an

individualized assessment of whether the defendant culpably added

to the conduct in the community needing deterrence — may help solve

- 74 - the puzzle of what exactly is a "community" for community-

characteristics purposes: a state or a commonwealth like Puerto

Rico, a county, a city, a town, etc.? We say this because in

practice the relevant community should become clear if what counts

is the defendant's relationship — individual to him — to that

community. We actually asked the parties how to define "community"

in this context. See Flores-González, 46 F.4th at 60 (mem.). And

they apparently agreed that it depends on the particular

circumstances of the particular case.21 But because this is a

fact-bound issue, we leave it to be hashed out in the district

courts (if necessary).

The government also insists that a rule stopping judges

from varying upwards based solely on community-centered concerns

not tied to case-specific factors puts us in "substantial tension"

with two out-of-circuit opinions: United States v. Hatch, 909

Flores says that the definition "depend[s] on the district 21

court's reasoning regarding the characteristic's significance and its relationship to a valid sentencing factor." The government says that "depending on the circumstances of the particular case, a sentencing court could reasonably determine that the relevant community is a single state or the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, a county, a city, a town, or something else, such as a discernable region within a state or a region covering multiple states."

- 75 - F.3d 872 (7th Cir. 2018) (per curiam), and United States v. Cavera,

550 F.3d 180 (2d Cir. 2008) (en banc).

We disagree.

The Seventh Circuit's Hatch opinion affirmed an upward

variance for a gun-trafficking defendant. See 909 F.3d at 874.

The judge there had said "that the rise of gun violence in Chicago

meant that the [s]entencing [g]uidelines did not adequately

reflect the seriousness of [the defendant's] offense or

sufficiently deter firearm trafficking." Id. But the judge had

also found that

• the defendant had "illegally brought handguns into Chicago

three times," "[t]he first time[] accompanied by . . . a

large-scale Chicago gun dealer";

• he had used a friend to buy guns in another state to do so;

and

• "altogether" he had trafficked 17 guns into Chicago's black

market, some going to "felons" and even "a minor."

Id. at 874-75. Seeing no reversible error, the Seventh

Circuit wrote:

Beyond geographic issues, the judge considered [the defendant's] history and characteristics (mostly "in his favor"), the nature of the offense ("troubling," and [the defendant's] failure to fully accept responsibility "bothered" him), the seriousness of the offense ("difficult to

- 76 - overstate"), and the need for deterrence and respect for the law.

Id. at 875.

The Second Circuit's en banc Cavera opinion also

affirmed an upward variance for a gun-trafficking defendant. See

550 F.3d at 184, 197. Seeking "to accomplish the goal of general

deterrence," the district judge — focusing on the case-specific

context, so as to make "an individualized judgment" — had noted

• New York City had a "profitable black market in firearms,"

created by the state's "strict gun control laws";

• the defendant had sold 16 guns to New York dealers just before

his arrest; and

• "the consequences for the community of bringing or

transporting . . . firearms into New York City" included the

increased risk of future violence.

See id. at 185, 186, 197. Wrapping up, the Second Circuit

said that the defendant "knew the guns he sold were destined for

New York." Id. at 197 (emphasis added). So "he was a knowing

participant in the traffic heading in that direction" — meaning

that "[a]s a result, there was no abuse of discretion in the

[judge's] decision to consider New York market conditions . . . to

- 77 - accomplish the goal of general deterrence." Id. (emphases

added).22

What stands out in bold relief is that each of these

sentencers — unlike Flores's — "ground[]" an upward variance "in

case-specific factors," see Flores-Machicote, 706 F.3d at 24, with

the record showing (to focus again on Cavera) that the defendant

"knowing[ly]" trafficked the guns into the relevant community and

thus helped add to the gun violence there, see Cavera 550 F.2d at

197 (emphasis added); see also Hatch, 909 F.3d at 874.

H

The government makes three more far-reaching claims for

why we must affirm Flores's sentence. Our colleagues' opinion

joins in one of them.

None succeeds.

The first of these arguments focuses on our Circuit's

requirement (mentioned earlier in discussing Rivera-Berríos) that

if "a sentencing court relies on a factor already accounted for by

22One should know that Judge (now Justice) Sotomayor — in an opinion concurring and dissenting in part — said that if it is true "that the black market for guns is only profitable" in a few urban areas like New York City, then it is also true that the guidelines "already account for any deterrence issues raised by New York's strict gun laws," because gun-trafficking crimes happen "almost entirely or predominantly in those areas." See id. at 222 (Sotomayor, J., joined by Cardamone and Straub, JJ., concurring and dissenting in part, and by Pooler, J., in part).

- 78 - the sentencing guidelines to impose a variant sentence, [it] must

indicate what makes that factor worthy of extra weight." See

United States v. Díaz-Lugo, 963 F.3d 145, 155 (1st Cir. 2020)

(alteration in original and quotation marks omitted); see also

Zapete-García, 447 F.3d at 60. To hear the government tell it,

this requirement clashes with Gall and its siblings because (to

quote the government) the rule "effectively operates as an

erroneous presumption that a variance from the [g]uidelines is

categorically unreasonable."

Not so.

Every time judges pick "sentence[s] substantially

different from the [g]uidelines' range, [they] risk[] creating

unwarranted sentencing disparities, in violation of 18 U.S.C.

§ 3553(a)(6), for most other judges will give sentences closer to

the norm." Kirkpatrick, 589 F.3d at 415.23 So "substantial

variances from the . . . [c]ommission's recommendations require

careful thought." Id. (citing Gall and Spears, among other

caselaw). And while the Supreme Court forbids us from requiring

"'extraordinary' circumstances to justify" an outside-guidelines

sentence, we know that a major variance demands a more substantial

23 The government also claims that disparity concerns vanish when a defendant possesses a gun in a community the judge concludes is "atypically plagued by that offense." But as we will see (in section IV.H.3(c)), the government offers no convincing rationale or standard for such a judge-defined plagued-by-crime rule.

- 79 - reason than a minor one — in Gall's phrasing, the reason must be

"sufficiently compelling to support the degree of the variance"

(it is fair to say then that a substantial variance ups the chances

of appellate reversal). See 552 U.S. at 47 (first quote), 50

(second quote) (emphases added); see also id. at 47-51 (discussing

meaningful appellate review for reasonableness). See generally

Rita, 551 U.S. at 354, 356 (noting that a sentencer must "set forth

enough to satisfy the appellate court that he has . . . a reasoned

basis for exercising his own legal decisionmaking authority" and

noting that "Circuit courts exist to correct . . . mistakes when

they occur"). The extra-weight requirement is just the

sufficiently-compelling-reason rule in action.

A post-Gall case of ours — United States v. Ofray-Campos,

534 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 2008) — nicely illustrates the point.

Convicted of conspiring to distribute drugs, a defendant there

received a sentence "two and one half times greater — and more

than twenty-four years longer — than the top of the recommended

guidelines range." Id. at 42-43. Two factors propelled the

variance: "(1) [the defendant's] possession of 'powerful weapons'

as a 'triggerman,' and (2) his involvement in violence in

connection with the narcotics activity." Id. at 43. Those

factors, we said, "may have justified a substantial upward

variance" — just not one as big as he got. Id. And we took

particular issue with the judge's "triggerman" comment, noting

- 80 - that the "firearm possession had already been considered, and

accounted for," in a guidelines enhancement that raised the

defendant's offense level. See id. Repeating Gall's warning that

a sentencer's explanation must match the variance's degree, we

then said that this factor was "not so distinct from the firearm

possession that was incorporated into the guidelines calculation

as to justify a variance of such magnitude." Id. at 43 (emphases

added and citing Zapete-García, 447 F.3d at 60). See generally

United States v. Flores-Nater, 62 F.4th 652, 657 (1st Cir. 2023)

(stating that an "upward variance must rest on more than factors

already accounted for in the guideline[s] calculus").

Casting its gaze elsewhere, the government also claims

that our extra-weight requirement is out of sync with Sixth, Tenth,

Eleventh, and D.C. Circuit caselaw. But decisions from those

Circuits suggest otherwise. To quote a typical case — which also

happens to quote our Zapete-García opinion — the Eleventh Circuit

has held that judges "may rely on a factor 'already included in

the calculation of the guidelines sentencing range' so long as"

they state "'specifically the reasons that [their] particular

defendant's situation is different from the ordinary situation

covered by the guidelines calculation.'" See United States v.

Styles, No. 20-13321, 2021 WL 4059953, at *4 (11th Cir. Sept. 7,

2021) (per curiam) (emphasis added and quoting Zapete-García, 447

F.3d at 60); see also United States v. Boucher, 937 F.3d 702, 708-

- 81 - 09 (6th Cir. 2019) (noting that the court has vacated an above-

guidelines sentence based on a factor "already incorporated into

the [g]uidelines-recommended sentence" because the judge did not

sufficiently explain what distinguished the defendant's case from

the usual one); United States v. Alapizco-Valenzuela, 546 F.3d

1208, 1222-23 (10th Cir. 2008) (stating that if judges impose

variant sentences based on factors "already accounted for in the

advisory [g]uidelines range," they must state "specifically the

reasons that [their] particular defendant's situation is different

from the ordinary situation covered by the guidelines calculation"

(emphasis added and quoting a case that quotes Zapete-García, 447

F.3d at 60)); United States v. Brown, 808 F.3d 865, 873 (D.C. Cir.

2015) (declaring that judges can vary based on factors already

accounted for by the guidelines if they show "how . . . the

[g]uidelines do not fully account for those factors" (quotation

marks omitted)). And none of those cases involved a judge using

community characteristics to vary upward, like what happened here.

Thinking creatively, the government next tries to

rebrand variances driven solely by community characteristics as

Kimbrough variances. Reduced to basics, the government's

Kimbrough-based argument runs (at least implicitly) this way.

(1) Judges varying from a commission-suggested range based solely

on community concerns are disagreeing with the range itself.

- 82 - (2) Kimbrough says that judges can disagree with the commission

(but not with a statute, naturally, and they must act reasonably).

(3) So Kimbrough means — contrary to Rivera-Berríos and its ilk —

that judges can vary based solely on community characteristics of

the crime's locale (subject to the respecting-statutes and acting-

reasonably caveats just mentioned).

The thesis does not hold together (to be fair a case of

ours dropped a footnote suggesting the possibility that a variant

sentence driven only by this kind of community characteristic might

be a Kimbrough variance, see Carrasquillo-Sánchez, 9 F.4th at 61

n.2 — but the answer to that suggestion is no, for reasons we are

about to come to).

Unhappy with rampant sentencing disparities under the

old regime, Congress tasked the commission with creating

"sentencing policies and practices for the Federal criminal

justice system." See 28 U.S.C. § 991(b)(1) (emphases added).

Staffed by experts, the commission knows that any actual crime

will be done only in a particular place, at a particular time, in

a particular way, and by a particular offender with a particular

background. Cf. United States v. Aguilar-Peña, 887 F.2d 347, 351

(1st Cir. 1989) (noting that "[b]ecause the grounds for departure

derived their essence from the offense itself, not from

[idiosyncratic] circumstances attendant to a particular

defendant's commission of a particular crime, the grounds,

- 83 - virtually by definition, fell within the heartland"). But a

commission-endorsed guidelines range is generally meant to apply

in any case involving that offense. See Rita, 551 U.S. at 350.

That is why the commission expects judges "to treat each guideline

as carving out a 'heartland,' a set of typical cases embodying the

conduct that each guideline describes." See USSG Ch. 1 Pt. A,

introductory cmt. 4(b) (emphasis added). So the range reflects a

judgment about the right range for the mine-run way of committing

the crime, not a judgment about the right range for every case

involving that crime.

All of which is to say that an outside-guidelines

sentence powered solely by community concerns does not reflect a

policy-based beef with the commission's reasons for setting the

range. It simply reflects a decision that the case is not mine-

run and so is not one for which that baseline range was

established. Otherwise — if it were as the government suggests —

then one could call any variant sentence an exercise of Kimbrough

authority, which would make the sentence reverse-proof.24

24If more were needed — and we doubt that it is — Kimbrough (as we said a few pages ago) reinstated a below-guidelines sentence for crack possession after noting (among other things) the "[c]ommission's consistent and emphatic position that the crack/powder disparity is at odds with § 3553(a)." See 552 U.S. at 111. But here the government points us to nothing suggesting the commission has expressed such a concern with USSG § 2K2.1(a)(4)(b) — the provision underpinning Flores's base offense level.

- 84 - 3

Leaning on Concepción — a fairly recent Supreme Court

case — the government (quoting that decision) finally says that

because sentencers have "wide discretion in the sources and types

of evidence" that they may use, see 142 S. Ct. at 2395-96 (quoting

Williams, 337 U.S. at 246), they (to quote the government's brief)

can "rely upon [that discretion] in determining whether a

particular community possesses characteristics that would justify

an upward variance."

The argument is not a difference-maker.

(a)

Concepción — which addressed sentence modifications

under the First Step Act, see id. at 2396, not community-based

variances — talked about judges' discretion to consider different

evidence sources and types in assessing "the whole person before

them," see id. at 2398 (emphasis added); see also id. at 2398-99

(noting the history of judicial discretion to consider the "fullest

information possible concerning the defendant's life and

characteristics" (emphasis added)). Again, our judge relied not

on Flores's actions or his characteristics but on his (the judge's)

- 85 - perception of violent crime in Puerto Rico generally to vary

upward. And that distinction makes a world of difference.

(b)

Defending the judge's approach, the government and our

colleagues' opinion quote back to us Concepción's comments that

"[t]he only limitations on [a sentencer's] discretion" about

information sources and types "are those set forth by Congress in

a statute or by the Constitution." See id. at 2400. Sure. But

the principle that judges may discretionarily consider a vast array

of materials at sentencing does not mean that they can do so in an

unreasonable way. And once again, it is unreasonable to go "too

far" in relying on a community characteristic in upwardly varying

a sentence. That limitation seems especially warranted when

considering data about geographical differences. "Gut feelings

about regional differences can be subjective in dangerous ways.

Empirical data should be scrutinized because they make subjective

feelings appear plausible, even when the analysis suffers from

significant flaws." Cavera, 550 F.3d at 224 (Sotomayor, J., joined

by Cardamone and Straub, JJ., concurring and dissenting in part,

and by Pooler, J., in part); see also id. at 195 (stating that "a

district court should not rely on 'subjective considerations such

as "local mores" or feelings about a particular type of crime'").

See generally United States v. Colón-Maldonado, 953 F.3d 1, 10

(1st Cir. 2020) (holding that due process demands that judges not

- 86 - sentence defendants using "materially untrue" factual

"assumptions" (quoting Townsend v. Burke, 334 U.S. 736, 740-41

(1948))). Flores's judge cited no information source to

corroborate his (the judge's) variance-justifying hypotheses,

including (for instance) that "crime in Puerto Rico far exceeds

the known limits on the mainland" and that "gun crimes" are thus

"more serious here than if they had occurred in a less violent

society." As the judge pointed out, the prosecutor did "mention[]"

that Puerto Rico "is a hotspot for gun violence." But the

prosecutor — like the judge — also offered no support for that

supposed fact.

Trying to downplay our reliability concerns, our

colleagues' opinion quotes a case of ours that quoted a district

judge's comment calling Puerto Rico a "hot spot for weapons." See

Viloria-Sepulveda, 921 F.3d at 10. But that case cites no source

supporting the judge's comment and gives no indication that any

party questioned the reliability of the judge's perceptions about

local gun violence. Our colleagues' opinion also says that Flores

"doubly waived" any reliability argument by not raising it below

or in his opening brief. But we can relax a raise-or-waive rule

to avoid a miscarriage of justice. See Sindi v. El-Moslimany, 896

F.3d 1, 30 (1st Cir. 2018). Regardless — and for reasons already

explained — we need not resolve whether the judge violated due

process by relying on the just-described findings.

- 87 - (c)

That is a nice segue to talk about statistics. Again

citing no sources, the judge mentioned "[t]he number of murders"

on the island and how they have "gone down drastically from 2011."

Never mind that Flores's case does not involve murder

(parenthetically, no one has presented relevant statistics about

machine-gun possession). The difficulty is that "[s]tatistical

evidence that fails to satisfy minimum standards of reliability

proves nothing." See Flores-Machicote, 706 F.3d at 24. With that

in mind, we asked both sides "what . . . the current violent-crime

statistics for the major municipalities in Puerto Rico" show and

"[h]ow . . . they compare with other major municipalities in the

United States." See Flores-González, 46 F.4th at 60 (mem.). Each

said that "FBI crime data" is "the most reliable data available."

But they did and do disagree about what the data means. Flores

claims that "the most complete data available on violent-crime

statistics" shows that "Puerto Rico as a whole" and its "major

municipalities . . . have low violent-crime rates when compared

with the states on the mainland and their major municipalities."

Conversely the government claims that the data shows that "Puerto

Rico has a particularly high rate of murder and nonnegligent

manslaughter" compared to other districts. Because federal

appellate courts are not factfinders, see Pullman-Standard v.

- 88 - Swint, 456 U.S. 273, 291-92 (1982), that is a subject to be worked

out in the district courts (if necessary).

Which makes this as good a place as any to say that the

guidelines recognize that in some cases "a[] factor important to

the sentencing determination [might be] reasonably in dispute."

See USSG § 6A1.3(a). And in that scenario "the parties shall be

given an adequate opportunity to present information to the court

regarding that factor," see id. — with the judge required to rule

on the dispute or say that the dispute does not matter, see Fed.

R. Crim. P. 32(i)(3)(B), after possibly allowing "the parties to

introduce evidence on the objections," see id. 32(i)(2).

The short of this long discussion is that none of the

government's reasons why we should overrule variance-vacating

opinions like Rivera-Berríos is a needle-mover (none of those

decisions involved Kimbrough-policy variances, don't forget). And

none of our colleagues' opinion's views (some of which mirror the

government's) is a game-changer either.

V

The net effect of our en banc review is this.

As before, judges can still use geographic concerns —

like "the incidence of particular crimes in the relevant community"

— to "contextualize[] the relevant need for deterrence." See

Flores-Machicote, 706 F.3d at 23. But they must still "ground

- 89 - sentencing determinations in case-specific factors" and not "focus

too much on the community and too little on the individual," see

id. at 24 — i.e., they cannot give so little weight to the

individualized circumstances of how the defendant committed the

crime that they (in the name of "general deterrence") treat every

commission of it as requiring an upward variance (absent mitigating

circumstances). See id.; see also Rivera-Berríos, 968 F.3d at

136-37.

And with these opinions still on the books, Flores's

upward variance — lacking as it does that necessary case-specific

connection — should not stand. So this court should (and we would)

vacate the disputed sentence and remand for resentencing within

the advisory prison range of 24 to 30 months — "within" being

appropriate because the government below recommended a within-

range term and the judge himself stressed that Flores's case was

not more harmful than others like his. See Rivera-Berríos, 968

F.3d at 137 (taking a similar approach in a similar situation);

see also United States v. Ramos-Carreras, 59 F.4th 1, 8 n.6 (1st

Cir. 2023). But the grant of rehearing en banc (which vacated the

prior panel's opinion) and an evenly divided en banc court (which

affirms the erroneous variance by operation of law) means that

Flores (unlike others) will not get the benefit of this pre-

existing and still-binding precedent.

- 90 -