Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
Serbelio Tepaz-Perez was serving a term of supervised release when he committed a new illegal reentry offense in the Western District of Texas. The district court revoked his supervised release and imposed a 12-month revocation sentence, ordering it to run consecutively to the 21-month sentence imposed for the new illegal reentry conviction — resulting in a combined exposure of 33 months of imprisonment.
Tepaz-Perez appealed the revocation sentence to the Fifth Circuit, arguing that the 12-month term was substantively unreasonable solely because the district court directed it to run consecutively rather than concurrently with the new offense sentence.
The Court’s Holding
A per curiam panel of Judges Richman, Southwick, and Willett affirmed the revocation sentence. The court held that Tepaz-Perez failed to rebut the presumption of reasonableness that attaches to a within-Guidelines revocation sentence, and that he could not demonstrate the district court committed a clear or obvious error in imposing a substantively unreasonable sentence.
The panel cited United States v. Warren, 720 F.3d 321 (5th Cir. 2013), and United States v. Lopez-Velasquez, 526 F.3d 804 (5th Cir. 2008), for the applicable reasonableness standards in revocation proceedings, and Puckett v. United States, 556 U.S. 129 (2009), for the plain error framework governing the forfeited claim.
Key Takeaways
- A revocation sentence carries a presumption of reasonableness when it falls within the applicable Guidelines range, and the defendant bears the burden of rebutting that presumption.
- A district court’s decision to run a revocation sentence consecutively to a new offense sentence does not, standing alone, render the revocation sentence substantively unreasonable.
- Failure to properly object below subjects a sentencing challenge to plain error review, requiring the defendant to show a clear or obvious error — a high bar that Tepaz-Perez could not meet.
Why It Matters
This unpublished decision reinforces established Fifth Circuit doctrine that consecutive revocation sentences in illegal reentry cases will withstand appellate challenge absent a compelling showing that the district court abused its discretion. For defense counsel, it underscores the importance of preserving sentencing objections at the district court level, since plain error review makes it substantially harder to obtain relief on appeal.
More broadly, the case illustrates the significant sentencing consequences that can flow from supervised release violations in immigration cases: a defendant who might otherwise face only a modest revocation term can wind up serving substantially longer aggregate time when revocation and new-offense sentences run back-to-back.