USA V. MARTIN SALAZAR, No. 22-50060 (9th Cir. 2023)
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Defendant pled guilty to conspiring to distribute controlled substances within the Los Angeles County Jail (LACJ) system. At sentencing, the district court granted Defendant safety-valve relief from the mandatory minimum of five years imprisonment under 18 U.S.C. Section 3553(f). The government appealed, arguing Defendant was ineligible for safety-valve relief because he never proffered what he knew to prosecutors as required by Section 3553(f)(5).
The Ninth Circuit vacated the sentence and remanded for resentencing. The panel held that the district court erred by failing to make the requisite finding to support its application of the safety valve. Section 3553(f) requires the district court to make specific findings “at sentencing,” including that “the defendant has truthfully” proffered before it can apply the safety valve. The district court made no such finding here. The panel wrote that even if it could indulge Defendant’s request to assume that the district court implicitly found that his plea agreement constituted a sufficient proffer considering the government’s independent knowledge of the offense, Defendant’s plea agreement alone could not, on this record, have satisfied the proffer requirement.
Court Description: Criminal Law The panel vacated a sentence and remanded for resentencing in a case in which the district court granted Martin Salazar, who pled guilty to conspiring to distribute controlled substances within the Los Angeles County Jail system, safety-valve relief from the mandatory minimum of five years’ imprisonment under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f). Relevant to this appeal is 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f)(5): [The district court must find that] not later than the time of the sentencing hearing, the defendant has truthfully provided to the Government all information and evidence the defendant has concerning the offense or offenses that were part of the same course of conduct or of a common scheme or plan, but the fact that the defendant has no relevant or useful other information to provide or that the Government is already aware of the information shall not preclude a determination by the court that the defendant has complied with this requirement. The panel held that the district court erred by failing to make the requisite finding to support its application of the safety valve. Section 3553(f) requires the district court to make specific findings “at sentencing,” including that “the UNITED STATES V. SALAZAR 3 defendant has truthfully” proffered, before it can apply the safety valve. The district court made no such finding here. Instead, the district court concluded a proffer would be futile because it could not determine “what else the proffer [would] accomplish” given Salazar’s limited involvement and the government’s knowledge of his offenses. The panel held that this was error because there is no futility exception to the proffer requirement in § 3553(f)(5). The panel wrote that even if Salazar had no further knowledge of the conspiracy, he should have at least communicated that fact to the government in order to qualify for the reduction. The panel wrote that even if it could indulge Salazar’s request to assume that the district court implicitly found that his plea agreement constituted a sufficient proffer considering the government’s independent knowledge of the offense, Salazar’s plea agreement alone could not, on this record, have satisfied the proffer requirement. The panel noted that Salazar expressly acknowledged that the plea agreement’s factual basis was “not meant to be a complete recitation of all facts relevant to the underlying criminal conduct or all facts known to him,” and that the plea agreement raises more questions than it answers. The panel wrote that the district court’s assumption regarding the nature of Salazar’s offense conclusively demonstrates that his plea agreement could not suffice as a written proffer. The panel concluded that, on this record, the district court erred in granting Salazar safety-valve relief. 4 UNITED STATES V. SALAZAR
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