Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-07-01064/USCOURTS-ca8-07-01064-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Clinton L. McGhee
Appellee
United States of America
Appellant

Document Text:

*

The Honorable Joseph F. Bataillon, Chief Judge, United States District Court

for the District of Nebraska.

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 07-1064

___________

United States of America, *

*

Appellant, *

* Appeal from the United States

v. * District Court for the 

* District of Nebraska. 

Clinton L. McGhee, * 

* [PUBLISHED]

Appellee. * 

___________

Submitted: September 24, 2007

Filed: January 16, 2008

___________

Before COLLOTON, BEAM, and GRUENDER, Circuit Judges.

___________

PER CURIAM.

Clinton McGhee pled guilty to possession with intent to distribute more than

50 grams of cocaine base (crack cocaine), in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) and

(b)(1), and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug-trafficking offense, in

violation of 18 U.S.C. 924(c)(1). For reasons detailed in a 19-page sentencing

memorandum, the district court*

 sentenced McGhee to 132 months’ imprisonment on

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the drug charge and 60 months’ imprisonment on the firearms charge, to be served

consecutively. The government appeals, arguing that the district court abused its

discretion by departing by one criminal history category under USSG § 4A1.3, that

the court impermissibly took into account its disagreement with the sentencing

guidelines for crack cocaine, see United States v. Spears, 469 F.3d 1166 (8th Cir.

2006) (en banc), vacated, No. 06-9864, 2008 WL 59232 (U.S. Jan. 7, 2008), and that

while the other reasons cited by the district court were permissible considerations

under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), see United States v. Lazenby, 439 F.3d 928, 933-34 (8th

Cir. 2006), this court should reverse the district court’s “extraordinary variance” from

the pre-departure guidelines range of 235 to 293 months’ imprisonment on the drug

charge, because there were not “extraordinary circumstances” to justify it. See

Appellant’s Br. 19 (citing United States v. Dalton, 404 F.3d 1029, 1033 (8th Cir.

2005)).

After United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005), we review a sentence to

determine whether it is unreasonable with regard to 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), applying a

“deferential abuse-of-discretion standard.” Gall v. United States, 128 S. Ct. 586, 591

(2007). We conclude that whether the district court’s decision to depart downward

under USSG § 4A1.3 is considered a “procedural” aspect of “calculating the

Guidelines range,” see 128 S. Ct. at 597 (punctuation omitted), or part of

“substantive” reasonableness review, see id. at 594 (rejecting a rule that requires

“proportional” justifications for “departures” from the guidelines range), it is evident

that the district court would have reached the same outcome under § 3553(a), and

there was no abuse of discretion in concluding that McGhee’s criminal history

differed meaningfully from the active violent behavior often associated with

defendants in criminal history category VI. See Leocal v. Ashcroft, 543 U.S. 1, 11

(2004). We further conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in

concluding that the crack cocaine guidelines yielded a sentence “greater than

necessary” to achieve the purposes of § 3553(a). See Kimbrough v. United States, 128

S. Ct. 558, 575 (2007). The government’s argument that the sentence is unreasonably

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lenient due to the absence of “extraordinary circumstances” fails in light of Gall.

There, while highlighting that a district court has responsibility in the first instance to

provide “sufficient justifications” that “explain his conclusion that an unusually

lenient or an unusually harsh sentence is appropriate,” Gall, 128 S. Ct. at 594, the

Court also rejected “an appellate rule that requires ‘extraordinary’ circumstances to

justify a sentence outside the Guidelines range.” Id. at 595. Assuming the district

court’s variance from the advisory guidelines range on the drug count could be

characterized as “extraordinary,” we understand the Court’s opinion in Gall also to

preclude a requirement of “extraordinary circumstances” to justify an “extraordinary

variance,” for that was the only type of sentence outside the guidelines range to which

this court had applied an “extraordinary circumstances” requirement. See Kimbrough,

128 S. Ct. at 578 (Thomas, J., dissenting) (“Today in Gall v. United States, the Court

holds that a Court of Appeals may not require sentences that deviate substantially

from the Guidelines range to be justified by extraordinary circumstances.”). Applying

the “deferential abuse-of-discretion standard” described in Gall, and abiding by Gall’s

direction to refrain from “proportionality review,” we affirm the judgment of the

district court. See Gall, 128 S. Ct. at 597 (“The fact that the appellate court might

reasonably have concluded that a different sentence was appropriate is insufficient to

justify reversal of the district court.”).

______________________________

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