The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed a thirty-month prison sentence for illegal reentry. The court held that the defendant failed to demonstrate the sentence was substantively unreasonable.
Juan Manuel Soria-Beltran was sentenced to thirty months in prison for illegal reentry in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas. He appealed, challenging the substantive reasonableness of the sentence.
The court’s reasoning
The court applied the standard for substantive reasonableness, requiring the defendant to show that the sentence does not account for a factor that should have received significant weight, gives significant weight to an irrelevant or improper factor, or represents a clear error of judgment in balancing the sentencing factors. The court found that the defendant failed to demonstrate any of these deficiencies.
What it means going forward
The affirmation reinforces the district court’s discretion in sentencing for illegal reentry cases where the defendant cannot prove a clear error in the balancing of factors.
