United States of America v. Edward Fuentes

NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
EDWARD FUENTES,
Defendant-Appellant.
No. 20-10143
D.C. Nos.
2:07-cr-00248-WBS-11
2:07-cr-00248-WBS
MEMORANDUM*
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of California
William B. Shubb, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted January 14, 2021
San Francisco, California
Before: SCHROEDER, BYBEE, and R. NELSON, Circuit Judges.
Edward Fuentes appeals the district court’s denial of his motions for
sentence reduction and for compassionate release. Fuentes was sentenced in 2012
to 240 months in prison on drug trafficking convictions after a guilty plea. We
have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We review discretionary sentence-
FILED
JAN 27 2021
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.

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reduction decisions for abuse of discretion and questions of statutory interpretation
de novo. See United States v. Chaney, 581 F.3d 1123, 1125 (9th Cir. 2009);
United States v. Carey, 929 F.3d 1092, 1096 (9th Cir. 2019).
This court has already affirmed the district court’s discretionary denial of
Fuentes’s 2017 motion to reduce his sentence pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2)
and the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s reduction of the base offense levels of
certain drug-related crimes. United States v. Fuentes, 735 F. App’x 356 (9th Cir.
2018). The district court did not abuse its discretion in denying Fuentes’s renewed
§ 3582(c)(2) motion, which was based on asserted exigencies caused by the
COVID-19 pandemic. In this appeal, he essentially asks this court to reweigh the
factors he argued to the district court, and he does not establish any abuse of the
district court’s discretion.
The district court also appropriately denied relief under § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i)
for failure to exhaust administrative remedies. A court may not excuse a
defendant’s failure to comply with a statutory exhaustion requirement. See Ross v.
Blake, 136 S. Ct. 1850, 1856–57 (2016). Fuentes may file a new motion in the
district court below after he has exhausted his remedies.
The district court’s order is AFFIRMED. The government’s motion to
supplement the record on appeal is DENIED as moot.
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