United States of America v. Sabrina Garcia

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION
File Name: 26a0336n.06
No. 25-5594
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
SABRINA GARCIA,
Defendant-Appellant.
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED
STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR
THE MIDDLE DISTRICT OF
TENNESSEE
OPINION
Before: CLAY, GIBBONS, and BLOOMEKATZ, Circuit Judges.
BLOOMEKATZ, Circuit Judge. Sabrina Garcia pleaded guilty to one firearm and one
drug charge. As part of her plea agreement, she waived her right to appeal her sentence. The
district court sentenced her to a below-Guidelines sentence of 30 months’ imprisonment. On
appeal, she contends that she received ineffective assistance of counsel at sentencing, a claim
which her appellate waiver does not bar. But her ineffective assistance claim is premature and the
other challenges she cloaks as ineffective assistance claims are barred. Accordingly, we dismiss
her ineffective assistance claim without prejudice and otherwise affirm her sentence.
In 2024, Garcia pleaded guilty to possessing a firearm as a user or addict of a controlled
substance and possessing a controlled substance with intent to distribute. See 18 U.S.C.
§ 922(g)(3); 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1). Garcia agreed to plead guilty and the government agreed to
dismiss a charge that would have carried a five-year minimum consecutive sentence. As part of
the agreement, Garcia also waived her right to appeal her sentence, provided that the district court
grant the government’s request to drop that remaining charge. And it did. By its terms, Garcia’s

-- 1 of 4 --

No. 25-5594, United States v. Garcia
-2-
appellate waiver does not apply to claims of involuntariness of her plea, prosecutorial misconduct,
or ineffective assistance of counsel.
At sentencing, Garcia’s counsel requested a noncustodial sentence. Both parties and the
district court agreed that the applicable Guidelines range was 57 to 71 months’ imprisonment. But
Garcia’s counsel argued that her history of trauma and various neurological and physical
difficulties warranted an alternative approach. Garcia has not had an easy life, to say the least. As
her sentencing memoranda and the psychological evaluation reports appended to the presentence
report detailed, Garcia has a significant history of abuse and trauma, dating back to childhood; she
dropped out of high school after struggling with a learning disability; and she currently suffers
from substance-abuse disorder, a seizure disorder, and various mental health issues. Despite these
challenges, Garcia has helped raise her three children, who are succeeding in school, and has
earned multiple professional certificates to increase her employment opportunities. At the
sentencing hearing, the district court heard testimony regarding these challenges and successes
from Garcia’s mother. Together, her counsel argued, this history of trauma, along with
neurological and physical difficulties, explain why Garcia’s history and characteristics justified a
minimal sentence. See 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(1).
After hearing testimony and the parties’ arguments, the district court sentenced Garcia to
30 months’ imprisonment—a 27-month downward variance from the low end of the Guidelines
range. While the district court did not agree that all of Garcia’s mitigating factors justified a
downward variance, it did discuss each of them. And it relied on this mitigation to cut Garcia’s
Guidelines sentence nearly in half. Garcia timely appealed this sentence.
Garcia contends that she received ineffective assistance of counsel at sentencing. We
generally do not review claims of ineffective assistance of counsel raised for the first time on direct

-- 2 of 4 --

No. 25-5594, United States v. Garcia
-3-
appeal. See United States v. Crosgrove, 637 F.3d 646, 663 (6th Cir. 2011). Garcia argues this is
the exceptional case where the record is sufficiently developed to do so. See id. But she has not
identified specific conduct that her counsel should have engaged in, or refrained from, to
demonstrate deficient performance. See Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 690 (1984). Nor
has she explained how there would be a reasonable probability of an even shorter sentence had her
counsel acted differently. See id. at 691–94. Instead, she faults her counsel because the district
court, in her view, did not properly weigh the mitigating factors. But ineffective assistance of
counsel requires more than claiming error by the district court; it requires the defendant to identify
specific failures by their counsel that led to any alleged error. Id. at 690. Garcia points to none
and instead rests on conclusory statements that her counsel was ineffective. “[C]onclusory
assertions of ineffective assistance are not adequate” to justify review on direct appeal, so we
decline her request to review this claim now. Crosgrove, 637 F.3d at 663.
In the guise of an ineffective assistance claim, Garcia also appears to challenge the
procedural and substantive reasonableness of the district court’s pronounced sentence. For
instance, she argues that the district court failed to meaningfully engage with her mitigating
factors. However, to the extent Garcia challenges the procedural and substantive reasonableness
of her sentence in this appeal, her plea agreement bars her from doing so.
Because of her appellate waiver, we will not entertain Garcia’s procedural and substantive
reasonableness attacks on her sentence unless she demonstrates that this waiver “was not knowing
and voluntary,” United States v. Morrison, 852 F.3d 488, 490 (6th Cir. 2017), or that enforcing it
would amount to a miscarriage of justice, see Hunter v. United States, 608 U.S. ---, 2026 WL
1751815, at *5 (2026). Garcia does not challenge the knowing and voluntary nature of her waiver.
Nor does she argue that a miscarriage of justice would result from enforcing it. Therefore, Garcia’s

-- 3 of 4 --

No. 25-5594, United States v. Garcia
-4-
appellate waiver bars us from reviewing the merits of any procedural or substantive reasonableness
challenge she intended to press.
We dismiss Garcia’s ineffective assistance of counsel claim without prejudice and
otherwise affirm her sentence.

-- 4 of 4 --