Opinion
Criminal No. 3:03-CR-359-D., (Fifth Circuit No. 04-10496).
April 13, 2005
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
The court sentenced defendant Daniel Belmonte-Martin ("Belmonte") on April 23, 2004 to 46-months' imprisonment and a three-year term of supervised release for the offense of illegal reentry after deportation, and he appealed. Belmonte argues, inter alia, that the court's statement at sentencing that there was no plea agreement should be understood as indicating that the court had implicitly rejected the plea agreement. He maintains that the court committed plain error by rejecting the plea agreement without giving him the opportunity under Fed.R.Crim.P. 11(c)(5) to withdraw his guilty plea. He also posits that the Fifth Circuit should not enforce the waiver-of-appeal provision of his plea agreement.
On April 12, 2005 the Fifth Circuit remanded the case to this court "for the limited purpose of clarifying the record as to whether the court accepted or rejected the plea agreement at Belmonte's sentencing." United States v. Belmonte-Martin, No. 04-10496, at 3 (5th Cir. Apr. 12, 2005) (per curiam) (order). This remand is necessary because "[t]he resolution of whether Belmonte's substantial rights have been affected by the district court's error depends on whether the district court intended to accept or reject the agreement." Id.
The court now clarifies on remand that it implicitly accepted the plea agreement at sentencing. The court neither intended to, nor did, reject the plea agreement. The court has rejected plea agreements in the past, but it has in each instance permitted the defendant to withdraw his plea. It has never rejected a plea agreement and then proceeded immediately to sentence the defendant.
Instead, the court implicitly accepted the plea agreement. This is corroborated by a provision in the plea agreement in which the government agreed under Rule 11(c)(1)(B) to recommend that Belmonte be sentenced "at the low end of the applicable sentencing guideline range." Plea Agreement ¶ 8. The guideline range the court calculated was 46 to 57 months, based on an offense level of 21 and a criminal history category of III. The sentence the court imposed — 46 months — is the bottom point in the range. The court also considered and rejected at sentencing Belmonte's motion for downward departure, which is consistent with its intent to accept the plea agreement. It would typically be unnecessary to address a downward departure motion after rejecting a plea agreement.
What occurred in this case is that the court, in preparing for sentencing, focused on other parts of the presentence report than the provisions that plainly state there was a plea agreement. See, e.g., PSR ¶ 4. The court then erroneously assumed there was no plea agreement, probably because this is frequently true in single-count illegal reentry cases handled by the public defender's office in this district. But in sentencing Belmonte, the court implicitly accepted the plea agreement by giving effect to its provisions, including one that significantly benefited Belmonte: sentencing him at the bottom of the applicable range.
The court directs the clerk of this court to transmit a copy of this memorandum opinion and order to the clerk of the Fifth Circuit for docketing in United States v. Belmonte-Martin, No. 04-10496.