United States v. Ortiz-Rodriguez

── United States v. Ortiz-Rodriguez ── Court: Court of Appeals for the First Circuit Date: May 20, 2026 Category: General United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit No. 25-1683 UNITED STATES, Appellee, v. ROBERTO ORTIZ-RODRÍGUEZ, Defendant, Appellant. APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO [Hon. Francisco A. Besosa, U.S. District Judge] Before Barron, Chief Judge, Breyer,* Associate Justice, Gelpí, Circuit Judge. Laura I. Soto-Santiago, with whom Rachel Brill, Federal Public Defender, and Franco L. Pérez-Redondo, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Supervisor, Appellate Division, were on brief, for appellant. Maarja T. Luhtaru, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom W. Stephen Muldrow, United States Attorney, and Juan Carlos Reyes-Ramos, Assistant United States Attorney, Chief, Appellate Division, were on brief, for appellee. * Hon. Stephen G. Breyer, Associate Justice (Ret.) of the Supreme Court of the United States, sitting by designation. May 20, 2026  BARRON, Chief Judge. In this appeal, Roberto Ortiz-Rodríguez ("Ortiz") challenges the revocation of his term of supervised release and his resulting sentence. He does so chiefly on the ground that he was denied notice of one of the violations of his conditions of supervised release on which the sentence rests. We affirm. I. A.1 In July 2021, Ortiz pleaded guilty in the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico to one count of knowingly possessing a firearm as a prohibited person (based on his status as a person with a qualifying felony conviction), in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). The District Court sentenced Ortiz to a forty-one month term of imprisonment, to be followed by a three-year term of supervised release. The terms of Ortiz's supervised release included mandatory conditions that prohibited him from: (1) "commit[ting] another federal, state[,] or local crime"; (2) "unlawfully possess[ing] a controlled substance"; or (3) failing to "refrain from any unlawful use of a controlled substance." His term of 1 We draw the underlying facts from "the plea agreement," "the transcript[] of the . . . revocation hearing[]," United States v. Rosa-Borges, 101 F.4th 66, 69 (1st Cir. 2024) (citation modified), and the uncontested portions of the "motions submitted by [Ortiz's] probation officer to the [D]istrict [C]ourt," United States v. Maldonado-Negroni, 141 F.4th 333, 335 n.1 (1st Cir. 2025). - 3 - supervised release was also subject to a special condition that required Ortiz to "participate in an approved substance abuse monitoring and/or treatment services program" and to submit to drug testing. Ortiz began his term of supervised release in September 2024. Shortly thereafter, in October 2024 and February 2025, he submitted two urine samples in accord with the drug-testing condition. The first sample tested positive for marijuana, and the second for marijuana and cocaine. Ortiz agreed to participate in an outpatient substance abuse and mental health treatment program but left it without authorization on March 6, 2025. In April 2025, Ortiz again submitted a urine sample in accord with the drug-testing condition. It tested positive for marijuana and cocaine. He once again agreed to participate in a substance abuse treatment program, this time at a residential treatment facility with outpatie