Background
Gregorio De Nova Cantu pleaded guilty to illegal reentry in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. The district court imposed a sentence above the advisory guidelines range.
On appeal, De Nova Cantu challenged the sentence as substantively unreasonable. He relied on the district court’s comments concerning his prior murder conviction and sentence, as well as the court’s upward variance in the case of a different defendant, to argue that the sentencing court abused its discretion.
The Court’s Holding
The Fifth Circuit affirmed. Applying the deferential standard governing substantive-reasonableness review, the panel held that the district court’s comments about De Nova Cantu’s prior murder conviction and sentence did not establish an abuse of discretion.
The panel likewise concluded that the district court’s upward variance for another defendant did not demonstrate that De Nova Cantu’s above-guidelines sentence was substantively unreasonable. The court therefore left his sentence intact.
Key Takeaways
- Above-guidelines sentences are reviewed for substantive reasonableness under a deferential abuse-of-discretion standard.
- The district court’s comments about De Nova Cantu’s prior murder conviction and sentence did not establish an abuse of discretion.
- A sentencing court’s upward variance in another defendant’s case did not show that De Nova Cantu’s sentence was substantively unreasonable.
Why It Matters
The decision illustrates the difficulty of overturning an upward variance on substantive-reasonableness grounds. References to a defendant’s serious criminal history, and comparisons to the court’s treatment of another defendant, do not by themselves establish an abuse of discretion under the Fifth Circuit’s deferential review.