Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/501/129
Timestamp: 2014-04-16 18:00:30
Document Index: 352320477

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 6', '§ 6', '§ 3553', '§ 3742', '§ 3553', '§ 6']

William J. BURNS, Petitioner v. UNITED STATES. | LII / Legal Information Institute
Supreme Court aboutsearch liibulletin subscribe previews William J. BURNS, Petitioner v. UNITED STATES.
501 U.S. 129 (111 S.Ct. 2182, 115 L.Ed.2d 123)
Argued: Dec. 3, 1990.
[HTML] dissent, SOUTER, WHITE, O'CONNOR
[HTML] Syllabus A plea agreement with the Government recited that petitioner Burns would plead guilty to three counts and stated the parties' expectation that his sentence would fall within a particular offense-level/criminal-history range under the United States Sentencing Commission's Guidelines. The probation officer, as required by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32, filed a presentence report in which he confirmed the parties' expectation that the sentencing range would be 30 to 37 months and concluded that there were no factors that would warrant departure from the Guidelines sentence. Although neither party filed any objections to the report, the District Court announced, at the end of the sentencing hearing, that it was departing upward from the Guidelines range and, based upon three grounds, sentenced Burns to 60 months' imprisonment. The Court of Appeals affirmed the sentence, concluding that, although subdivision (a)(1) of Rule 32 requires a district court to afford the parties "an opportunity to comment upon the probation officer's determination and on other matters relating to the appropriate sentence" at the sentencing hearing, it would be inappropriate to impose on a district court a requirement that it notify the parties of its intent to make a sua sponte departure from the Guidelines in the absence of express language to that effect.
(a) In order to eliminate the unwarranted disparities and uncertainty associated with indeterminate sentencing under the pre-existing system, the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 requires district courts to determine sentences based on the various offense- and offender-related factors identified by the Guidelines. Under the Act, a district court may disregard the Guidelines' mechanical dictates only upon finding an aggravating or mitigating circumstance not adequately considered by the Commission. The Act amended Rule 32 to assure focused, adversarial development of the factual and legal issues relevant to determining the appropriate Guidelines sentence. Although, ordinarily, the presentence report or the Government's recommendation will notify the defendant that an upward departure will be at issue and of the facts that allegedly support it, that will not be the case where, as here, the district court departs sua sponte from the Guidelines sentencing range. Pp. 132-135.
(b) The textual and contextual evidence of legislative intent indicates that Congress did not intend a district court to depart from the Guidelines sua sponte without first affording notice to the parties. The Government's contrary reading renders meaningless the parties' express right under Rule 32(a)(1) to "comment upon relevant matters," since the right to comment upon a departure has little reality or worth unless one is informed that a decision is contemplated. The Government's reading is also inconsistent with Rule 32's purpose. Under the Government's interpretation of Rule 32, a critical sentencing determination would go untested by the adversarial process in every case in which the parties, lacking notice, failed to anticipate an unannounced and uninvited departure by the district court from the Guidelines. Furthermore, the meaning that the Government attaches to Congress' silence is contrary to decisions in which, despite the absence of express statutory language, this Court has construed statutes authorizing analogous deprivations of liberty or property to require that the Government give affected individuals both notice and a meaningful opportunity to be heard. See, e.g., American Power & Light Co. v. SEC, 329 U.S. 90, 107-108, 67 S.Ct. 133, 143-144, 91 L.Ed. 103. Since the Government's interpretation would require this Court to confront the serious question whether notice is mandated by the Due Process Clause, the Court will not construe Rule 32 to dispense with notice in this setting absent a clear statement of congressional intent to that effect. See, e.g., Edward J. DeBartolo Corp. v. Florida Gulf Coast Building and Construction Trades Council, 485 U.S. 568, 575, 108 S.Ct. 1392, 1397, 99 L.Ed.2d 645. Pp. 135-138.
282 U.S.App.D.C. 194, 893 F.2d 1343 (1990), reversed and remanded.
MARSHALL, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BLACKMUN, STEVENS, SCALIA, and KENNEDY, JJ., joined. SOUTER, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which WHITE and O'CONNOR, JJ., joined, and in Part I of which REHNQUIST, C.J., joined.
Steven H. Goldblatt, for petitioner.
Stephen J. Marzen, for respondent.
We granted certiorari to resolve this conflict. 497 U.S. ----, 110 S.Ct. 3270, 111 L.Ed.2d 780 (1990). We now reverse.
The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 revolutionized the manner in which district courts sentence persons convicted of federal crimes. See generally Mistretta v. United States, 488 U.S. 361, 363-367, 109 S.Ct. 647, 649-652, 102 L.Ed.2d 714 (1989). Before the Act, Congress was generally content to define broad sentencing ranges, leaving the imposition of sentences within those ranges to the discretion of individual judges, to be exercised on a case-by-case basis. Now, under the "guidelines" system initiated by the Act, district court judges determine sentences based on the various offense-related and offender-related factors identified by the Guidelines of the United States Sentencing Commission. See 18 U.S.C. 3553(a)(4), (b). The purpose of this reform was to eliminate the "unwarranted disparities and . . . uncertainty" associated with indeterminate sentencing. See, e.g., S.Rep. No. 98-225, p. 49 (1983). The only circumstance in which the district court can disregard the mechanical dictates of the Guidelines is when it finds "that there exists an aggravating or mitigating circumstance of a kind, or to a degree, not adequately taken into consideration by the Sentencing Commission. . . ." 18 U.S.C. 3553(b).
"In pre-guidelines practice, factors relevant to sentencing were often determined in an informal fashion. The informality was to some extent explained by the fact that particular offense and offender characteristics rarely had a highly specific or required sentencing consequence. This situation will no longer exist under sentencing guidelines. The court's resolution of disputed sentencing factors will usually have a measurable effect on the applicable punishment. More formality is therefore unavoidable if the sentencing process is to be accurate and fair. . . . When a reasonable dispute exists about any factor important to the sentencing determination, the court must ensure that the parties have an adequate opportunity to present relevant information." U.S. Sentencing Comm'n, Guidelines Manual § 6A1.3, official commentary (1990) (emphasis added).
At least 10 days before the sentencing, the report must be disclosed to the parties, see Rules 32(c)(3)(A), (C), whom the Guidelines contemplate will then be afforded an opportunity to file responses or objections with the district court, see Guidelines § 6A1.2, and official commentary.
Finally, Rule 32(a)(1) provides that "at the sentencing hearing, the court must afford the counsel for the defendant and the attorney for the Government an opportunity to comment upon the probation officer's determination and on other matters relating to the appropriate sentence." This case involves one aspect of the procedures surrounding Guidelines sentencing: whether the defendant is entitled to notice before the district court departs sua sponte from the Guidelines sentencing range.
As we have set forth, Rule 32 contemplates full adversary testing of the issues relevant to a Guidelines sentence and mandates that the parties be given "an opportunity to comment upon the probation officer's determination and on other matters relating to the appropriate sentence." Fed.Rule Crim.Proc. 32(a)(1). Obviously, whether a sua sponte departure from the Guidelines would be legally and factually warranted is a "matter relating to the appropriate sentence." In our view, it makes no sense to impute to Congress an intent that a defendant have the right to comment on the appropriateness of a sua sponte departure but not the right to be notified that the court is contemplating such a ruling.
We find the Government's analysis unconvincing. As one court has aptly put it, "not every silence is pregnant." State of Illinois Dept. of Public Aid v. Schweiker, 707 F.2d 273, 277 (CA7 1983). In some cases, Congress intends silence to rule out a particular statutory application, while in others Congress' silence signifies merely an expectation that nothing more need be said in order to effectuate the relevant legislative objective. An inference drawn from congressional silence certainly cannot be credited when it is contrary to all other textual and contextual evidence of congressional intent.
Here the textual and contextual evidence of legislative intent indicates that Congress did not intend district courts to depart from the Guidelines sua sponte without first affording notice to the parties. Such a reading is contrary to the text of Rule 32(a)(1) because it renders meaningless the parties' express right "to comment upon . . . matters relating to the appropriate sentence." "The right to be heard has little reality or worth unless one is informed" that a decision is contemplated. Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co., 339 U.S. 306, 314, 70 S.Ct. 652, 657, 94 L.Ed. 865 (1950). This is especially true when the decision in question is a sua sponte departure under the Guidelines. Because the Guidelines place essentially no limit on the number of potential factors that may warrant a departure, see, e.g., Guidelines Ch. 1, Part A, Introduction 4(b), no one is in a position to guess when or on what grounds a district court might depart, much less to "comment" on such a possibility in a coherent way. The Government's construction of congressional "silence" would thus render what Congress has expressly said absurd. Cf. Green v. Bock Laundry Machine Co., 490 U.S. 504, 527, 109 S.Ct. 1981, 1994, 104 L.Ed.2d 557 (1989) (SCALIA, J., concurring in judgment) (when "confronted . . . with a statute which, if interpreted literally, produces an absurd, and perhaps unconstitutional result, our task is to give some alternative meaning to the statute . . . that avoids this consequence").
Lastly, the meaning that the Government attaches to Congress' silence in Rule 32 is completely opposite to the meaning that this Court has attached to silence in a variety of analogous settings. Notwithstanding the absence of express statutory language, this Court has readily construed statutes that authorize deprivations of liberty or property to require that the Government give affected individuals both notice and a meaningful opportunity to be heard. See American Power & Light Co. v. SEC, 329 U.S. 90, 107-108, 67 S.Ct. 133, 143-144, 91 L.Ed. 103 (1946) (statute permitting Securities and Exchange Commission to order corporate dissolution); The Japanese Immigrant Case, 189 U.S. 86, 99-101, 23 S.Ct. 611, 614-615, 47 L.Ed. 721 (1903) (statute permitting exclusion of aliens seeking to enter United States). The Court has likewise inferred other statutory protections essential to assuring procedural fairness. See Kent v. United States, 383 U.S. 541, 557, 86 S.Ct. 1045, 1055, 16 L.Ed.2d 84 (1966) (right to full, adversary-style representation in juvenile transfer proceedings); Greene v. McElroy, 360 U.S. 474, 495-508, 79 S.Ct. 1400, 1413-1420, 3 L.Ed.2d 1377 (1959) (right to confront adverse witnesses and evidence in security-clearance revocation proceedings); Wong Yang Sung v. McGrath, 339 U.S. 33, 48-51, 70 S.Ct. 445, 453-455, 94 L.Ed. 616 (1950) (right to formal hearing in deportation proceedings).
In this case, were we to read Rule 32 to dispense with notice, we would then have to confront the serious question whether notice in this setting is mandated by the Due Process Clause. Because Rule 32 does not clearly state that a district court sua sponte may depart upward from an applicable Guidelines sentencing range without providing notice to the defendant we decline to impute such an intention to Congress. See, e.g., Edward J. DeBartolo Corp. v. Florida Gulf Coast Building & Construction Trades Council, 485 U.S. 568, 575, 108 S.Ct. 1392, 1397, 99 L.Ed.2d 645 (1988) ("Where an otherwise acceptable construction of a statute would raise serious constitutional problems, the Court will construe the statute to avoid such problems unless such construction is plainly contrary to the intent of Congress").
We hold that before a district court can depart upward on a ground not identified as a ground for upward departure either in the presentence report or in a prehearing submission by the Government, Rule 32 requires that the district court give the parties reasonable notice that it is contemplating such a ruling. This notice must specifically identify the ground on which the district court is contemplating an upward departure.
The Court today imposes a procedural requirement neither contemplated by Congress nor warranted by the language of any statute or rule. The Court's inference of a notice requirement from congressional silence rests on a failure to appreciate the extraordinary detail with which the Sentencing Reform Act (in amending Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32 and in its other provisions) expressly provides the procedures to be followed in imposing sentence in a federal criminal case. The absence from this carefully calibrated scheme of any provision for notice of the sort required by the Court makes it clear that, in the words the Court quotes, ante, at 6, the congressional silence was pregnant, and that Congress intended to require no such notice. The Court's interpretation of Rule 32 accomplishes " 'not a construction of a rule, but, in effect, an enlargement of it by the court.' " West Virginia University Hospitals, Inc. v. Casey, 499 U.S. ----, ----, 111 S.Ct. 1138, 1148, 113 L.Ed.2d 68 (1991), quoting Iselin v. United States, 270 U.S. 245, 251, 46 S.Ct. 248, 250, 70 L.Ed. 566 (1926) (Brandeis, J.). Because the Court's creation cannot be justified as a reasonable construction of the Rule, I respectfully dissent.
The report itself, "not including any final recommendation as to sentence," must in most respects be disclosed to the defendant, his counsel, and the attorney for the Government at least 10 days before sentencing, unless the defendant waives his right to that notice. Rules 32(c)(3)(A) and (C); 18 U.S.C. 3552(d). Even when there is no full report, "prior to the sentencing hearing, the court shall provide the counsel for the defendant and the attorney for the Government with notice of the probation officer's determination, pursuant to the provisions of subdivision (c)(2)(B), of the sentencing classifications and sentencing guideline range believed to be applicable to the case." Rule 32(a)(1).
The district court must sentence within the range set by the Guidelines, unless it finds "an aggravating or mitigating circumstance of a kind, or to a degree, not adequately taken into consideration by the Sentencing Commission in formulating the guidelines that should result in a sentence different from that described." 18 U.S.C. 3553(b). A judge who departs from the Guidelines must "state in open court . . . the specific reason for the imposition of a sentence different from that described," § 3553(c)(2), and a sentence outside the applicable range may be appealed. §§ 3742(a(3), (b)(3).
mandating that the parties be given "an opportunity to comment upon the probation officer's determination and on other matters relating to the appropriate sentence." In the Court's view, the right to comment on a matter relating to sentencing, such as the possibility of upward departure, can be exercised effectively only when that "matter" is identified explicitly; accordingly, the argument runs, in providing an opportunity to comment Congress must also have intended to require that notice be given of any matter upon which the parties might desire to comment. See ante, at 136-137.
The Court seeks to justify its rewriting of Rule 32 by asserting that interpreting the Rule as written would be "absurd," because such an interpretation would "render meaningless" the right to comment on "other matters relating to the appropriate sentence" conferred by the Rule. Ante, at 136-137. Even if we were authorized to embellish Congress' handiwork in the interest of enduing it with additional meaning, however, the Court's argument would fail on its own terms, for the Court's specific notice requirement is not necessary to save the right to comment from meaninglessness.
Second, even with regard to the "matter" of possible upward departure, the absence of specific notice hardly renders the opportunity to comment meaningless. The Court's contrary conclusion rests on its erroneous treatment of the absence of specific notice of the factors on which the court may rely as equivalent to a complete absence of notice that the court may depart. Because the Sentencing Reform Act provides that a court may depart from the applicable guideline range if it finds "an aggravating or mitigating circumstance of a kind, or to a degree, not adequately taken into consideration by the Sentencing Commission in formulating the guidelines that should result in a sentence different from that described," 18 U.S.C. 3553(b), the statute itself puts the parties on notice that departure is always a possibility, and the parties can use their opportunity to comment to address that possibility. Indeed, the record in this case demonstrates that, even without specific notice, counsel may choose to gear part of the argument to the possibility of departure. At the sentencing hearing, despite the absence of any indication that the judge was contemplating departure, petitioner's counsel closed his remarks to the court by asking "that the period of incarceration be limited enough that he has a family to return to, that he has a future that he can work towards rebuilding,and we think the guidelines are the appropriate range, Your Honor. We ask Your Honor to consider a sentence within the guidelines." App. 45 (emphasis added).
Although specific notice of the sort required by the Court might be useful to the parties in helping them focus on specific potential grounds for departure, its absence hardly makes the opportunity to comment on the possibility of departure so meaningless as to justify judicial legislation. Although "we construe statutes, where possible, so as to avoid rendering superfluous any parts thereof," Astoria Federal Savings & Loan Assn. v. Solimino, 501 U.S. ----, ----, 111 S.Ct. 2166, ----, --- L.Ed.2d ---- (1991), it is not our practice to supplement their provisions simply because we think that some statutory provision might usefully do further duty than Congress has assigned to it.
I begin with the proposition that "the sentencing process, as well as the trial itself, must satisfy the requirements of the Due Process Clause." Gardner v. Florida, 430 U.S. 349, 358, 97 S.Ct. 1197, 1204, 51 L.Ed.2d 393 (1977) (plurality opinion). At the threshold, of course, there must be an interest subject to due process protection, such as the expectancy that we found to have been created by the Nebraska statute at issue in Greenholtz v. Inmates of Nebraska Penal and Correctional Complex, 442 U.S. 1, 99 S.Ct. 2100, 60 L.Ed.2d 668 (1979). The act there in question directed that the parole board, when considering the possible release of an eligible prisoner, " 'shall order his release unless it is of the opinion that his release should be deferred because' " one of four statutory criteria was met. Id., at 11, 99 S.Ct., at 2106; see also Cleveland Bd. of Ed. v. Loudermill, 470 U.S. 532, 538-541, 105 S.Ct. 1487, 1491-1492, 84 L.Ed.2d 494 (1985); Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 558, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 2975, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974). The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 creates a similar presumption by providing that "the court structure. Id., at 599-600, 99 S.Ct., at 2502-2503. We called it "a general approach for testing challenged state procedures under a due process claim," id., at 599, 99 S.Ct., at 2502, even as we recognized that "while facts are plainly necessary for a proper resolution of the relevant medical questions, they are only a first step in the process." Id., at 609, 99 S.Ct., at 2507. In Greenholtz, we relied on Mathews while realizing that the Parole Board's decision was "necessarily subjective in part and predictive in part," that it entailed the exercise of "very broad discretion," 442 U.S., at 13, 99 S.Ct., at 2107, and that none of the statutory bases for denying parole was a mere issue of historical fact. See id., at 11, 99 S.Ct., at 2106. In Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651, 97 S.Ct. 1401, 51 L.Ed.2d 711 (1977), holding that due process did not require notice and a hearing before the infliction of corporal punishment, we applied Mathews even though the relevant "risk of error" was not merely that facts might be mistaken, but that apart from any factual mistake corporal punishment might be inflicted "unnecessarily or excessively." 430 U.S., at 678, 97 S.Ct., at 1416. The Mathews analysis has thus been used as a general approach for determining the procedures required by due process whenever erroneous governmental action would infringe an individual's protected interest, and I think that Mathews provides the right framework for the analysis here as well.
Neither, however, is the Government's interest at issue here an insignificant one. Although the Court does not decide when notice must be given, it seems likely that the Court's notice requirement will force a district court to postpone the imposition of sentence whenever the court decides at or shortly before the sentencing hearing that upward departure should be considered. To avoid the possibility of such a postponement, a sentencing judge will need to schedule time well in advance of the sentencing hearing to identify and consider possible grounds for departure. Since the time spent on this advance review will not simply be recovered by subtracting it from the length of the subsequent sentencing hearing, the result will almost certainly be more time spent on a process already lengthened considerably by the new sentencing scheme. See Report of the Federal Courts Study Committee 137 (1990) (90 percent of judges in survey report that Guidelines have made sentencing more time-consuming; 30 percent report an increase of at least 50 percent in time spent on sentencing). Thus, the Government has an important interest in avoiding the additional drain on judicial resources that the Court's notice requirement will impose on already-overburdened district judges. Cf., e.g., Advisory Committee's Notes on Fed.Rule Crim.Proc. 32, 18 U.S.C.App., p. 798 (declining to require sentencing judge to notify defendant of possible uses of presentence report, because "the Committee believes that this additional burden should not be placed upon the trial judge").
The practical adequacy of this chance to challenge any erroneous fact statements is not limited to any significant degree by lack of notice that the judge is considering departure from the Guidelines, since a defendant clearly is on notice that an unfavorably erroneous fact statement can do him serious harm by influencing the judge to sentence on the high end of the guideline range, even when the disquieting fact might not drive the judge to the point of considering departure from the range itself. No procedure beyond that of the existing law is therefore necessary to provide a defendant with a reason as well as an effective opportunity to minimize the risk of an upward departure resting on a mistake of fact relevant to sentencing.
A second source of possible sentencing error inheres in the interpretation and application of congressional sentencing authorization. Of course, under any codified sentencing scheme there will always be some risk, albeit normally a low one, that a judge may stray beyond the outer limit of the sentence provided for the offense in question, in which event rehearing or appeal will allow for correction. There is, however, a potential for legal error peculiar to proceedings under the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, in the provision that an aggravating or mitigating fact may justify departure from the otherwise applicable guideline range if that factual circumstance is not adequately reflected in the range chosen by the Commission. 18 U.S.C. 3553(b). Because such an issue of adequate reflection goes essentially to the Commission's intentions, it has uniformly, and I believe correctly, been treated as an issue of law subject to customary appellate review.
Because a defendant thus has no need for evidentiary litigation, he has no need for notice of judicial intentions in order to focus the presentation of evidence. And while in some cases defense counsel might be able to affect a trial judge's initial view of the adequacy of a Guidelines range in reflecting an aggravating circumstance, the principal safeguard against serving extra time resulting from a mistake about the adequacy of the Guidelines will still be the safeguard available under the statute as now applied, an appeal of law. The opportunity for such a post-trial appeal therefore suffices to minimize the chance of any erroneous deprivation of liberty that might otherwise flow from the sort of legal error in question.
The second procedure available to minimize the risk of serving an unreasonable sentence is appellate review of the sentence itself. "If the court of appeals determines that the sentence . . . is outside the applicable guideline range and is unreasonable . . . and too high . . . it shall set aside the sentence and remand the case for further sentencing proceedings with such instructions as the court considers appropriate." 18 U.S.C. 3742(f)(2)(A). While this right to review is only as good as the record that a defendant can present to an appellate court, prehearing notice of a sentencing judge's intentions will not likely enhance the record for the defendant's benefit. A defendant already has the opportunity and impetus to challenge the factual predicate on which a sentence must stand or fall as reasonable or not. And since the comprehensive factual predicate is supplemented by the sentencing judge's statement of reasons for departing from the Guidelines, see § 3553(c), it is difficult to imagine how the record could be more conducive to a comprehensive review of a defendant's claim that his sentence outside the guideline range is unreasonably high.
In sum, existing process provides what is due without resort to the Court's requirement. This conclusion echoes our treatment in Greenholtz of an inmate's liberty interest in early parole, an interest comparable to that of petitioner in a shorter sentence. The Court of Appeals in Greenholtz had required the Parole Board to provide inmates eligible for parole with "written notice reasonably in advance of the hearing together with a list of factors that might be considered." 442 U.S., at 14, n. 6, 99 S.Ct., at 2107, n. 6. We decided that due process required no such notice, and held that it would suffice for the Board to "inform the inmate in advance of the month during which the hearing will be held . . . and on the day of the hearing . . . post notice of the exact time," even though the Board's notice would not include a list of factors on which the Board might rely. Ibid. The notice now required by the Court closely resembles the "list of factors" we rejected as constitutionally unnecessary in Greenholtz.
District courts have generally implemented this directive through local rules that allow the parties to file objections to the presentence report in advance of the sentencing hearing and that require the probation officer to respond to those objections. See, e.g., U.S.Dist.Ct. for the MD Ala.Rules 33(a)-(c); U.S.Dist.Ct. for the D DC Rules 311(a)-(c); U.S.Dist.Ct. for the ND Fla.Gen.Rules 23(b)-(d); U.S.Dist.Ct. for the ND Ill.Crim.Rules 2.06(g)-(i); U.S.Dist.Ct. for the ED-MD-WD La.Rules 16M(a)-(c); U.S.Dist.Ct. for the D.Minn.Rules 83.10(c)-(d); U.S.Dist.Ct. for the EDNC Rules 50.03-50.05; U.S.Dist.Ct. for the ND Ohio Crim.Rules 10.05(2)(b)-(d); U.S.Dist.Ct. for the WD Okla.Rules 42(E)(1)-(3); U.S.Dist.Ct. for the ED Tenn.Rules 27.3-27.5; U.S.Dist.Ct. for the ND Tex.Rules 10.9(b)-(e); U.S.Dist.Ct. for the WD Va.Rules 14(1)-(3); U.S.Dist.Ct. for the D.Wyo.Rules 219(c)-(f).
Because the question of the timing of the reasonable notice required by Rule 32 is not before us, we express no opinion on that issue. Rather, we leave it to the lower courts, which, of course, remain free to adopt appropriate procedures by local rule. See Guidelines § 6A1.2, and official commentary ("Courts should adopt procedures to provide for . . . the narrowing and resolution, where feasible, of issues in dispute in advance of the sentencing hearing"). See also n. 3, supra (listing local rules established to govern resolution of objections to findings in presentence report).
The Court's statement that we have "readily construed statutes that authorize deprivations of liberty or property to require that the Government give affected individuals both notice and a meaningful opportunity to be heard," ante, at 137-138 (emphasis in original) (citing cases), is inapposite. The cases cited by the Court involved statutes that made no provision whatsoever for notice or hearing. By contrast, the Sentencing Reform Act itself, as explained earlier, gives notice that departure is always a possibility; and the express provisions of Rule 32 give the defendant the opportunity to be heard at his sentencing hearing. [147]
Every Circuit except the Fifth has explicitly held, like the District of Columbia Circuit in this case, see 282 U.S.App.D.C. 194, 196, 893 F.2d 1343, 1345 (1990), that "plenary" or "de novo " review is appropriate. See United States v. Diaz-Villafane, 874 F.2d 43, 49 (CA1), cert. denied, 493 U.S. ----, 110 S.Ct. 177, 107 L.Ed.2d 133 (1989); United States v. Lara, 905 F.2d 599, 602 (CA2 1990); United States v. Ryan, 866 F.2d 604, 610 (CA3 1989); United States v. Chester, 919 F.2d 896, 900 (CA4 1990); United States v. Rodriguez, 882 F.2d 1059, 1067 (CA6 1989), cert. denied, 493 U.S. ----, 110 S.Ct. 1144, 107 L.Ed.2d 1048 (1990); United States v. Williams, 901 F.2d 1394, 1396 (CA7 1990), cert. pending, No. 90-5849; United States v. Whitehorse, 909 F.2d 316, 318 (CA8 1990); United States v. Singleton, 917 F.2d 411, 412 (CA9 1990); United States v. Dean, 908 F.2d 1491, 1494 (CA10 1990); United States v. Russell, 917 F.2d 512, 515 (CA11 1990), cert. denied, 499 U.S. ----, 111 S.Ct. 1427, 113 L.Ed.2d 479 (1991). The Fifth Circuit has held that departure will be affirmed when the reasons for departure are "acceptable." See, e.g., United States v. Murillo, 902 F.2d 1169, 1172 (1990).
There is one class of defendants for whom the right to appeal might not substitute for the ability to argue the issue to the district court: those for whom the Guidelines recommend either no incarceration or a period of incarceration shorter than the time necessary for the disposition of an appeal, but who receive a greater sentence in the exercise of the district court's authority to depart. For such a defendant, a successful appeal could come too late to undo completely the damage done by an erroneous departure decision. However, "a process must be judged by the generality of cases to which it applies, and therefore a process which is sufficient for the large majority of a group of claims is by constitutional definition sufficient for all of them." Walters v. National Assn. of Radiation Survivors, 473 U.S. 305, 330, 105 S.Ct. 3180, 3194, 87 L.Ed.2d 220 (1985). There is no contention that this class of defendants is sufficiently large to affect the due process calculus in this case.