UNITED STATES v. VIRAMONTES RUIZ (2021)

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.2021-08-17No. No. 17-10305

Summary · law.co

Holding. The court dismissed the appeal as moot because the defendant completed the custodial portion of his Nevada sentence and any modification to his Nevada supervised release would have no practical effect, given that his Texas supervised release term runs concurrently and would continue regardless.

Cirilo Viramontes-Ruiz appealed his 2017 Nevada federal sentence for illegal reentry, but the appellate court deferred the case pending resolution of a related precedent. By the time the court was prepared to decide, the circumstances had changed significantly. Viramontes-Ruiz completed his Nevada custodial sentence in October 2019 and subsequently received a separate, longer sentence from Texas federal court for a new illegal reentry offense committed after his deportation from the first case. His supervised release terms from both jurisdictions run concurrently.

The appellate court found the Nevada appeal moot because no meaningful relief could be granted. The custodial portion of the Nevada sentence was already completed, so Viramontes-Ruiz had no standing to challenge it. Additionally, even if the Nevada supervised release term were eliminated, he would still be under a three-year supervision obligation from the Texas sentence running during the identical period, making any relief from the Nevada appeal ineffectual.

Summary generated by law.co from the public-domain opinion. The opinion text itself is public domain.

Key issues

Mootness of appeal after completion of custodial sentence
Effect of concurrent supervised release terms on appellate relief
Standing to challenge completed sentence of incarceration

Procedural posture

The defendant appealed his 2017 Nevada district court sentence for illegal reentry, but the appeal was deferred pending resolution of related case law, and by the time the appellate court was ready to decide, intervening events rendered the appeal moot.

Authorities cited

No cited authorities resolved to law.co cases yet.

Opinion · public domain

MEMORANDUM ***

In 2017, Defendant Cirilo Viramontes-Ruiz appealed his sentence of twelve months’ imprisonment and three years of supervised release for being in the United States unlawfully, in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326(a). Because his appeal of the Nevada district courts judgment raised novel questions of Nevada law, we deferred submission until resolution of United States v. Figueroa-Beltran, 995 F.3d 724 (9th Cir. 2021), which addressed related issues. But intervening years that were required to resolve Figueroa-Beltran have mooted Defendants case, and we dismiss.

The district court in Nevada apportioned its custodial sentence such that the first six months ran concurrently with Defendants state sentence, while the second six months ran consecutively. Yet, upon his release from state prison in September 2018, Defendant was not transferred to federal prison but instead was deported to Mexico. Defendant reentered the United States and, in May 2019, federal authorities arrested him in Texas. He pleaded guilty, again, to being in the United States unlawfully following his removal. The district court in the Western District of Texas then sentenced Defendant to seventy months of imprisonment plus another three-year term of supervised release. United States v. Viramontes-Ruiz, No. 3:19-cr-01615-KC (W.D. Tex. Oct. 7, 2019) (judgment). Defendant did not appeal.

Before serving that latest sentence imposed by the federal court in Texas, though, Defendant first had to serve the remaining six months of his federal sentence from Nevada.

That makes Defendants appeal moot.

First, Defendant completed the custodial portion of his sentence from the District of Nevada on October 16, 2019. See United States v. Palomba, 182 F.3d 1121, 1123 (9th Cir. 1999) (holding that a defendant “has no standing to challenge [a] completed sentence” of incarceration). Second, Defendants unappealed three-year term of supervised release from the Western District of Texas is coextensive with his three-year term from the District of Nevada. See 18 U.S.C. § 3624(e) (“The term of supervised release commences on the day the person is released from imprisonment and runs concurrently with any Federal, State, or local term of probation or supervised release or parole for another offense to which the person is subject or becomes subject during the term of supervised release.”). Thus, Defendant does not present a case in which “[t]he ‘possibility’ that the sentencing court would use its discretion to reduce a term of supervised release under 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(2) [i]s enough to prevent the [appeal] from being moot.” Mujahid v. Daniels, 413 F.3d 991, 995 (9th Cir. 2005) (citation omitted). Even if Defendants term of supervised release from Nevada were eliminated, he still would spend those same three years under supervision by the Western District of Texas. We thus “cannot grant ‘any effectual relief whatever’ in [his] favor.” Calderon v. Moore, 518 U.S. 149, 150, 116 S.Ct. 2066, 135 L.Ed.2d 453 (1996) (citation omitted).

DISMISSED.

FOOTNOTES

. We grant the governments motion for us to take judicial notice of the undisputed records from the Federal Bureau of Prisons and for those records to remain sealed. (Docket Nos. 41 and 42).