No. 19-2151

UNITED STATES,

Appellee,

v.

ANGEL MIGUEL CARRASQUILLO-SÁNCHEZ,

Defendant, Appellant.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO

[Hon. Aida M. Delgado-Colón, U.S. District Judge]

Before

Howard, Chief Judge, Barron, Circuit Judge, McAuliffe,* District Judge.

Rafael F. Castro Lang for appellant. Francisco A. Besosa-Martínez, with whom W. Stephen Muldrow, United States Attorney, and Mariana E. Bauzá-Almonte, Assistant United States Attorney, Chief, Appellate Division, were on brief, for appellee.

August 16, 2021

* Of the District of New Hampshire, sitting by designation. BARRON, Circuit Judge. Angel Miguel Carrasquillo Sánchez ("Carrasquillo") received a forty-eight-month prison sentence after entering a guilty plea to one count of firearm possession in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(3) and 924(a)(2). Carrasquillo challenges the procedural and substantive reasonableness of that sentence. Because we conclude that the District Court plainly erred in failing to provide a sufficient case-specific explanation for its upward variance from the applicable sentencing range under the United States Sentencing Guidelines, we vacate Carrasquillo's sentence and remand for resentencing.

I.

Carrasquillo was arrested by local police officers on May 21, 2019, in the afternoon in Loíza, Puerto Rico, following a traffic stop. At the time of his arrest, Carrasquillo was travelling in a car with three other individuals -- among them his cousin. Carrasquillo was in the possession of a Glock pistol that had been modified to fire automatically. That firearm was loaded with twenty-nine rounds of ammunition. Five magazines that contained an additional 128 rounds of ammunition lay next to that firearm in the car. Carrasquillo's cousin, too, carried a loaded firearm and additional magazines and rounds of ammunition.

On May 30, 2019, a federal grand jury returned an indictment against Carrasquillo and his cousin. The indictment

- 2 - charged Carrasquillo with possession of a machinegun in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(o) and 924(a)(2) (Count One) and with possession of a firearm by a person "who is an unlawful user of . . . any controlled substance" in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(3) and 924(a)(2) (Count Two).

Carrasquillo entered a guilty plea on July 24, 2019, to the second of these two counts. In his plea agreement, he admitted that he was an unlawful user of a controlled substance because he had been "a habitual user of marihuana and smoke[d] 3 joints of marihuana a day since he was 17 years old." Carrasquillo and the government also agreed to advise the District Court that for purposes of calculating Carrasquillo's Guidelines sentencing range ("GSR"), his Total Offense Level ("TOL") was seventeen. They further agreed that they would each recommend a prison sentence of twenty-four months.

At the sentencing hearing on October 21, 2019, the District Court followed the plea agreement's advisory calculation of Carrasquillo's TOL. It did so by finding first that Carrasquillo's Base Offense Level ("BOL") was twenty pursuant to U.S.