United States of America v. Wilfredo Barrios

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted October 15, 2024*
Decided November 18, 2024
Before
MICHAEL Y. SCUDDER, Circuit Judge
JOHN Z. LEE, Circuit Judge
NANCY L. MALDONADO, Circuit Judge
No. 24-1662
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
WILFREDO BARRIOS,
Defendant-Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Southern District of Indiana,
Evansville Division.
No. 3:02-cr-00002-RLY-CMM-5
Richard L. Young,
Judge.
O R D E R
Wilfredo Barrios appeals the denial of his motion for compassionate release
under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i). The district court concluded that Barrios failed to
* We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument because the briefs and
record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not
significantly aid the court. FED. R. A PP. P. 34(a)(2)(C).
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with FED. R. A PP. P. 32.1

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No. 24-1662 Page 2
establish an extraordinary and compelling reason for a reduced sentence. Because the
court did not abuse its discretion in denying the motion, we affirm.
In 2003, a jury found Barrios guilty of conspiracy to sell methamphetamine,
21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 846, and engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, § 848(a)–
(b). Barrios received 480 months’ imprisonment for the first offense. For the second, he
received a mandatory life sentence based on the finding that (1) he was a principal
administrator, organizer, or leader of the enterprise; and (2) the enterprise involved a
threshold quantity or value of drugs. See § 848(b).
Barrios first moved for compassionate release in September 2020 based on
increased health risks related to the COVID-19 pandemic and his belief that he could
not receive a mandatory life sentence under current law. The district court denied that
motion and the motion to reconsider that followed. On appeal, we affirmed, concluding
in relevant part that Barrios’s attempts to benefit from non-retroactive changes in the
law were barred by United States v. Thacker, 4 F.4th 569 (7th Cir. 2021). United States v.
Barrios, No. 20-2944, 2021 WL 3116052 (7th Cir. July 22, 2021). The district court denied
Barrios’s next compassionate-release request (styled as a motion to “reinstate”) because
he again raised only arguments that were barred by Thacker.
Most recently, Barrios moved for compassionate release based on the newly
enacted Amendment 814 to the Sentencing Guidelines, see U.S.S.G. § 1B1.13(b)(6)
(effective Nov. 1, 2023). This policy statement allows relief from a sentence that is, in
light of current law, “unusually long” and produces “a gross disparity between the
sentence being served and the sentence likely to be imposed” now. The court denied
Barrios’s motion; it concluded that, because 21 U.S.C. § 848(b) still requires a life term
for his criminal conduct, there is nothing unusual about the sentence.
Barrios appeals the denial of his motion, which we review for an abuse of
discretion. United States v. Saunders, 986 F.3d 1076, 1078 (7th Cir. 2021). In relying on
U.S.S.G. § 1B1.13(b)(6), he identifies two Supreme Court decisions as relevant changes
that, he contends, render his sentence unusually long: Alleyne v. United States, 570 U.S.
99 (2013), and United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005). He contends that the facts
mandating his life sentence were never submitted to a jury, as current law requires. But
even assuming Barrios can bring these arguments in a motion for compassionate
release—which we need not resolve—he still is not eligible for a reduced sentence based
on Alleyne or Booker.

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No. 24-1662 Page 3
Barrios’s argument that his life sentence is unusually long because it resulted
from a mandatory guidelines scheme that has since been held unconstitutional,
see Booker, 543 U.S. at 245, is a non-starter. His life sentence was mandated by statute,
21 U.S.C. § 848(b), not the Sentencing Guidelines, so for him, Booker changed nothing.
Nor did Alleyne bring about a change that is relevant to Barrios. Alleyne requires
that factual findings triggering an enhanced statutory minimum be submitted to a jury
to find beyond a reasonable doubt. See 570 U.S. at 103. But here the record, which the
government supplemented at our request, shows that the jury was instructed on the
additional facts it needed to find to convict Barrios under 21 U.S.C. § 848(b), which
carried a mandatory minimum sentence of life imprisonment. Because the jury made
the required findings for a guilty verdict, Barrios’s minimum sentence was not
increased based on judge-found facts, and so, for him, Alleyne did not change the law in
a way that results in an unusually long sentence.
This makes it unnecessary for us to resolve the parties’ dispute about whether
Thacker is consistent with U.S.S.G. § 1B1.13(b)(6). Barrios contends that the district court
erroneously relied on Thacker because § 1B1.13(b)(6) supplanted our holding that non-
retroactive changes in the law cannot be extraordinary and compelling reasons for a
reduced sentence. The government urges us to reaffirm Thacker and preserves its
argument that the policy statement is unconstitutional. We need not weigh in here
because Barrios, whose sentence is unaffected by Booker and Alleyne, cannot benefit
from § 1B1.13(b)(6) in any event.
As a final note, the government’s briefing relies on information that comes from
the verdict forms, jury instructions, and sentencing hearing transcript. When the
government filed its brief, those documents were not in the electronic record, which is
common in cases that originated before the CM/ECF system. Because the parties did not
supply these documents in an appendix, we had to order the government to
supplement the record. Parties should be aware that obtaining hard-copy documents
outside the electronic record is not a simple task for this court. We remind the parties of
their responsibility under Circuit Rule 10(a)(3): “Counsel must ensure, within 21 days of
filing the notice of appeal, that all electronic and non-electronic documents necessary
for review on appeal are on the district court docket.” This is especially true when a
party bases its arguments on those documents, as the government did here.
AFFIRMED

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