Background
Tomas Balderas-Garcia pleaded guilty to illegal reentry into the United States in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326(a) and (b). The district court calculated an advisory sentencing-guidelines range of 24 to 30 months of imprisonment.
The district court varied upward and imposed 42 months of imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release. Balderas-Garcia did not preserve a substantive-reasonableness objection in the district court but raised that challenge for the first time on appeal.
The Court’s Holding
The Fifth Circuit reviewed the unpreserved challenge for plain error. It concluded that Balderas-Garcia’s arguments did not establish that the district court clearly erred in balancing the sentencing factors under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a).
The court therefore held that Balderas-Garcia had not shown his above-guidelines sentence was substantively unreasonable and affirmed the judgment.
Key Takeaways
- An unpreserved challenge to the substantive reasonableness of a sentence is reviewed for plain error.
- A 42-month sentence was affirmed despite the advisory guidelines range of 24 to 30 months.
- The defendant failed to show a clear error of judgment in the district court’s balancing of the § 3553(a) factors.
Why It Matters
The decision illustrates the difficulty of overturning an upward variance when the defendant did not preserve a substantive-reasonableness objection below. Under plain-error review, disagreement with the district court’s weighing of the § 3553(a) factors was insufficient to obtain resentencing.