Source: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-11th-circuit/1705171.html
Timestamp: 2020-07-12 13:35:59
Document Index: 636563836

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

Before ED CARNES, Chief Judge, WILSON, Circuit Judge, and CORRIGAN, * District Judge. Carol Herman, Theodore Cooperstein, Wifredo A. Ferrer, Kathleen Mary Salyer, Anne Ruth Schultz, Benjamin Widlanski, U.S. Attorney's Office, Miami, FL, for Plaintiff–Appellee. Michael Caruso, Federal Public Defender, Federal Public Defender's Office, Miami, FL, Fletcher Peacock, Federal Public Defender's Office, Fort Pierce, FL, for Defendant–Appellant.
The dissent's position is that an advisory guidelines range becomes less advisory and more mandatory if it was not correctly calculated at the initial sentence hearing. See Dissenting Op. at 58–60. But why? Why should the fact that it took an appeal and remand to get the advisory guidelines range correct make the corrected advisory guidelines range any less advisory than it would have been if the district court had correctly calculated it to begin with? We remand in cases like this one to correct errors in the steps leading to the district court's sentencing decision, not to punish the court or the government, or reward the defendant, because an error was committed the first time. The dissent would hold that if the district court imposed a sentence that was within a higher guidelines range at the initial sentencing, it must impose a sentence within the corrected lower guidelines range on remand. See Dissenting Op. at 58 (“Nothing in the record at Rosales–Bruno's initial sentencing hearing suggests that the court viewed Rosales–Bruno as the type of defendant who warranted an upward variance at all․”). In other words, the advisory guidelines become mandatory on remand.
The district court must consider the advisory guidelines range in making the sentencing decision, but it is only one of a dozen or so factors that the court must take into account. See Booker, 543 U.S. at 245, 125 S.Ct. at 757; see also 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). The Supreme Court has been clear that “[t]he Guidelines are not the only consideration․ Accordingly, after giving both parties an opportunity to argue for whatever sentence they deem appropriate, the district judge should then consider all of the § 3553(a) factors to determine whether they support the sentence requested by a party.” Gall, 552 U.S. at 49–50, 128 S.Ct. at 596.
Other circuits have affirmed above guidelines sentences for illegal reentry defendants with criminal histories. See, e.g., United States v. Rivera–Santana, 668 F.3d 95, 98–100, 99 n.5, 106 (4th Cir.2012) (holding that 240–month sentence for illegal reentry following removal for an aggravated felony conviction was substantively reasonable even though the guidelines range was only 120–150 months, the variance being justified by the defendant's extensive criminal history); United States v. Yanez–Rodriguez, 555 F.3d 931, 946–49 (10th Cir.2009) (affirming 144–month sentence for illegal reentry following removal for an aggravated felony conviction substantively reasonable even though the guidelines range was only 41–51 months imprisonment, the upward variance being justified in part by the defendant's prior conviction for aggravated sexual battery), overruled in part on unrelated grounds by Puckett v. United States, 556 U.S. 129, 133–34, 129 S.Ct. 1423, 1428 (2009).
The dissent believes Rosales–Bruno's offense is a “mine-run case” of illegal reentry not deserving of an upward variance. Dissenting Op. at 64–67. In support of that belief, the dissent says that it “suspect[s] that the criminal history of most convicted-felon, category V criminals is as bad or worse” than Rosales–Bruno's history. Dissenting Op. at 67. But it backs up its suspicion only with its similarly unsupported belief that whatever is true of Rosales–Bruno's criminal history must also be “equally true of other convicted-felon, category V illegal reentrants.”10 Id. at 14. “Truly, this is ‘turtles all the way down.’ “ Rapanos v. United States, 547 U.S. 715, 754 & n.14, 126 S.Ct. 2208, 2233 & n.14 (2006) (plurality op.). Conjecture is not proof, and tautology is not reasoning. If Rosales–Bruno believes the district court made a clear error of judgment when it sentenced him more harshly than it would have done in a “mine-run case,” it is his burden to prove as much. Langston, 590 F.3d at 1236. Neither he nor the dissent offers any proof. Their unsupported assertions and suspicions do not support a “definite and firm conviction” that the district court erred when it decided that Rosales–Bruno's criminal history and the other § 3553(a) factors made an 87–month sentence appropriate. See Irey, 612 F.3d at 1190.
The dissent insists that it doesn't want a “statistical analysis” and that all it is asking is for “district courts [to] use their common sense and experience” and their “good judgment.” Dissenting Op. at 66 n.4. But that is exactly what the district court did in this case. Drawing on his two decades of experience sentencing criminals, exercising common sense and good judgment, the district court determined that an 87–month sentence was warranted for this criminal in this case. Its reward for doing exactly what the dissent said it should do is to be second-guessed by the dissent.
Nothing in the record suggests that Rosales–Bruno is any worse than other convicted-felon, category V illegal reentrants, let alone so much worse that the high end of his advisory sentencing range should be tripled. We have previously vacated an above-Guidelines sentence for similar reasons. See United States v. Valdes, 500 F.3d 1291, 1292 & n.2 (11th Cir.2007) (per curiam) (vacating in part because “[m]any of the bases for the district court's sentence were already accounted for in calculating the Guidelines range” (emphasis added)).3 Why, then, did the district court sentence Rosales–Bruno to more than triple the upper end of an advisory range that was specifically designed for convicted-felon illegal reentrants with similar patterns of recidivism?
The Majority opinion attempts to answer this question by noting that Rosales–Bruno is “an outstanding candidate for an upward variance from the advisory guidelines range” primarily because he is a category V criminal, placing him among the worst 13.1 percent of illegal reentrants. Maj. Op. at 32–38. But it makes no sense to suggest that a person is “an outstanding candidate” for being treated three times harsher than other category v. criminals because he is a category V criminal. Being a category V criminal does no more than make Rosales–Bruno an outstanding candidate to be treated as a category v. criminal, which, in this case, means being sentenced to somewhere between 21 and 27 months' imprisonment. See Valdes, 500 F.3d at 1292 n.2; Valdes, 298 F. App'x at 930 (indicating that a district court abuses its discretion by imposing an upward variance based solely on prior convictions that are already incorporated into a defendant's criminal history category).
We have never vacated a sentence because it was too high, imposing a sentencing ceiling on remand. By contrast, on numerous occasions, we have vacated sentences because they were too low and imposed a sentencing floor. See, e.g., Irey, 612 F.3d at 1224–25 & n.46 (concluding that no sentence less than 30 years would suffice); Pugh, 515 F.3d at 1204 (holding that a sentence of probation without imprisonment or supervised release was-and would be-unreasonable); see also United States v. Livesay, 587 F.3d 1274, 1279 (11th Cir.2009) (“Not only do we hold that the particular sentence imposed below is unreasonable, but we also hold that any sentence of probation would be unreasonable․”); United States v. McVay, 294 F. App'x 488, 490 (11th Cir.2008) (per curiam) (prohibiting the district court from imposing a sentence without prison time). This forces me to believe that we are grading harshness and lenience on different scales. By failing to adhere to Irey and Pugh in this upward variance case, the Majority opinion reinforces this unstated double standard. It is true that we say all sentences are meaningfully reviewed for reasonableness, but in practice, it seems that only lenient sentences are subject to vacatur on purely substantive grounds. The message that we are sending to the district courts by this precedent is that they enjoy virtually unfettered sentencing discretion, so long as they sentence harshly. In other words, while we say otherwise, we are in reality reading a “severity principle” into sentencing that should not be there. See Irey, 612 F.3d at 1196–97 (explaining that § 3553(a) supports neither a “parsimony principle” nor a “severity principle”).
The distinction is critical because Valdes, unlike Irey, left open the possibility that the district court could impose the same sentence on remand if a more thorough explanation were offered. Again, in Irey, it did not matter what reasons the district court gave for its downward variance or whether it gave those reasons (as indeed it did); no sentence explanation could render any downward variance substantively reasonable in that case, and we instructed the district court to sentence Irey within the advisory range. See Irey, 612 F.3d at 1224–25 & n.46 (requiring the district court to impose a sentence of 30 years on remand).
Nor does our unpublished opinion in Lopez, 343 F. App'x 484, signal the same warning against harsh sentencing as cases such as Irey signaled against lenient sentencing. In vacating Lopez's sentence, we explained that “the judge's ability to [deviate above the guideline range despite the conviction's role in helping to dictate that range] does not then give free rein to impose any sentence above without first adequately justifying that decision .” Id. at 486 n.1 (emphasis added). As with Valdes, then, our decision in Lopez, which rested on “the adequacy of a district court's ․ explanation,” was, at least in significant part, “a classic procedural [decision], not a substantive one.” Irey, 612 F.3d at 1194; see also Gall, 552 U.S. at 51, 128 S.Ct. at 597 (“failing to adequately explain the chosen sentence—including an explanation for any deviation from the Guidelines range” is procedural error).
The rule underlying those decisions is no longer good law. Valdes and Gardner cited McVay, 447 F.3d 1348, for the proposition that “a district court's imposition of a sentence that falls far outside the Guidelines range must be supported by extraordinary circumstances.” Valdes, 500 F.3d at 1292 n.2 (emphasis added); see Gardner, 255 F. App'x at 476 (citing McVay for the same proposition). But McVay's “extraordinary circumstances” requirement, upon which our holdings in both Valdes and Gardner were based, was explicitly abrogated by the Supreme Court in Gall, 552 U.S. at 47, 128 S.Ct. at 595 (“We reject ․ an appellate rule that requires ‘extraordinary’ circumstances to justify a sentence outside the Guidelines range.”). Thus, neither Valdes nor Gardner proves that we have vacated a sentence because it was too long. They prove only that we have vacated a sentence when the district court failed to adequately justify a variance with “extraordinary circumstances,” which district courts are no longer required to do.
Consequently, to the extent the cases cited by the Majority opinion do reverse at least in part on substantive grounds, those same grounds plainly support reversal in this case. And my point remains: we have never expressly vacated a sentence as substantively unreasonable because it was simply too long and imposed a sentencing ceiling on remand. By contrast, we have not hesitated to vacate a sentence as substantively unreasonable because it was simply too short, and in many of those cases, we imposed a sentencing floor on remand. See, e.g., Irey, 612 F.3d at 1224–25 & n.46; Pugh, 515 F.3d at 1204; Livesay, 587 F.3d at 1279; McVay, 294 F. App'x at 490; see also Maj. Op. at App. B.
The district court improperly calculated Rosales–Bruno's sentence as 87 months—a within-Guidelines sentence based on an erroneous calculation of the Guidelines. On remand, the court imposed the same sentence—a triple-upward variance. Having examined the record, the factors, and the district court's reasons for imposing this sentence, I am convinced that this major variance was not supported by a significantly compelling justification, nor were the Guidelines given any weight or consideration. Thus, I would vacate Rosales–Bruno's sentence and remand for resentencing. Moreover, failure to do so here reinforces the perception that there is a double standard of review in the Eleventh Circuit-giving greater deference to sentences above the recommended Guidelines range than those below.
We recognized in Irey that “there is a difference between deference and abdication. If there were no difference, if we did not have a meaningful role to play, we would never have set aside any sentences as substantively unreasonable, but we have.” Irey, 612 F.3d at 1194 n.20 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). We have not, however, expressly set aside a sentence because it was too harsh. Refusing to vacate Rosales–Bruno's sentence in these circumstances all but eliminates the already weakened distinction between abdication and deference when we review harsh sentences. Because I believe we meant what we said in Irey—namely, that we have a meaningful role to play in reviewing sentences for substantive reasonableness—and because the only way to affirm Rosales–Bruno's sentence is to abdicate, I respectfully dissent.
3. See U.S. Sentencing Comm'n, n.2, supra.
8. See U.S. Sentencing Comm'n, Quick Facts: Illegal Reentry Offenses (2014), available at http://www.ussc.gov/sites/de fault/files/pdf/research-and-publications/quickfacts/Quick_Facts_Illegal_ ReentryFY13.pdf.
9. See U.S. Sentencing Comm'n, supra n.8.
12. We look to these sentencing facts because they, and not any graphic one-time occurrences, are the most reliable method of determining whether the message the dissent fears has been sent and received. “Cognitive psychology tells us that the unaided human mind is vulnerable to many fallacies and illusions because of its reliance on its memory for vivid anecdotes rather than systematic statistics.” Steven Pinker, quoted in “Steven Pinker: Fighting Talk from the Prophet of Peace,” The Observer, Oct. 15, 2011, available at http://www. theguardian.com/science/2011/oct/15/steven-pinker-better-angelsviolence-interview (last visited June 9, 2015).
15. See supra n.13. Like the figures cited in footnote 14, supra, these exclude departures. They also exclude a category the Sentencing Commission calls “government-sponsored” below guidelines sentences that includes both variances and departures.
16. The number of downward variances decreased one year (from 1,272 in 2010 to 1,215 in 2011). See supra n.13. Every other one of the nine years from 2006 to 2014, they increased.
17. The dissent spends several pages on an unsuccessful attempt to distinguish or belittle our decisions vacating as unreasonably long upward variance sentences. See Dissenting Op. at 74, 77–82. It first contends that those decisions do not count because none of them “impose a sentencing ceiling on remand.” Id. at 74. There are two fundamental flaws with that criticism. The first is that the dissent never explains why that matters, and it does not. A decision holding a sentence is unreasonably long is a decision that the sentence is unreasonably long regardless of whether the opinion specifies how long the sentence on remand can be without also being unreasonable.The second flaw in the dissent's position is that ignores the fact that, with only one exception, when we have vacated sentences as unreasonably short we have not specified the sentence that should be imposed on remand either. So under the dissent's own reasoning only one of our downward variance decisions counts in favor of its position—one decision in nine years. It is also worth noting that the one case in which we specified the only reasonable sentence that could be imposed on remand is Irey. In it, the top and bottom of the guidelines range were the same as the statutory maximum, which meant that the only sentence within the guidelines range was the maximum sentence. 612 F.3d at 1224. We decided that the facts of the crimes in Irey were so horrendous that no downward variance sentence could be reasonable “under the totality of the facts and circumstances of th[e] case.” Id. Our dissenting colleague agreed, joining in full that holding and all of the rest of the Irey opinion. We did in the Irey case exactly what he believed we were required to do in that case. He was right then and is wrong now.Next, the dissent argues that Valdes and Lopez were decided on procedural, not substantive, unreasonableness grounds, citing Irey for the proposition that “the adequacy of a district court's ․ sentence explanation is a classic procedural issue.” Dissenting Op. at 78–79 & n.13 (emphasis omitted). That reasoning misreads Irey. The language the dissent cites in Irey stands for the unremarkable proposition that if a district court fails to follow the required procedures—chief of which is to consider the § 3553(a) factors—the court has committed a procedural error. 612 F.3d at 1194; see also Gall, 552 U.S. at 51, 128 S.Ct. at 597 (explaining that “failing to consider the § 3553(a) factors, ․ or failing to adequately explain the chosen sentence” is “procedural error”); United States v. Scott, 426 F.3d 1324, 1329–30 (11th Cir.2005) (“[T]he district court explicitly acknowledged that it had considered [the defendant's] arguments at sentencing and that it had considered the factors set forth in § 3553(a). This statement alone is sufficient in post-Booker sentences.”).The Valdes opinion states that the “reasons discussed were inadequate to support an extraordinary variance to a sentence of 108 months,” not that the discussion of the reasons was itself inadequate. 500 F.3d at 1292 (emphasis added). The dissent misses that distinction. Similarly, in Lopez, we explicitly stated that the district court had complied with its procedural duties: it considered the § 3553(a) factors. 343 F. App'x at 486. When we vacated the sentence, we did so on substantive grounds, namely that the court's “justification”—its reason—for the sentence was inadequate, not its discussion of that justification. See id. Further, the dissent does not argue that the downward variance sentences we have vacated for similar reasons should not count. See, e.g., United States v. Hooper, 566 F. App'x 771, 773 (11th Cir.2014) (unpublished) (noting that “the court failed to cite a sufficiently significant justification for granting a 100%, 70–month downward variance”); United States v. McQueen, 727 F.3d 1144, 1159 (11th Cir.2013) (noting that the district court offered “no reasoned justification other than that [a codefendant] was getting a lower sentence” for defendants' downward variances); United States v. Pugh, 515 F.3d 1179, 1201 (11th Cir.2008) (“Quite simply, in our view, the district court did not support this major departure with a significant justification.”) (quotation marks omitted).The dissent also argues that Valdes and Gardner were decided under precedents that are no longer good law. (Those precedents required an extraordinary justification for an extraordinary variance.) Dissenting Op. at 81–82. But so what? The dissent does not claim that the decisions were inconsistent with then-binding precedent. See id. Why would decisions correctly applying the law at the time suggest anything other than that we will continue to correctly apply the law? Those two decisions vacating upward variance sentences as substantively unreasonable show that we will apply our binding precedent on reasonableness, which the dissent concedes correctly states the law.We note (as does the dissent, Dissenting Op. at 78–79) that two of these three decisions are unpublished and as such do not serve as binding precedent about the law. See 11th Cir. R. 36–2. Judge Martin recently seemed to seize on that point in her dissent from an unpublished opinion in United States v. Rivero, No. 14–10121, 2015 WL 1542684, at *5 (11th Cir. Apr. 8, 2015) (unpublished) (Martin, J., dissenting) (“[D]uring the ․ period since Booker, I am aware of no published opinion in which we have held that an above-Guidelines sentence was substantively unreasonable.”) (emphasis added). But the charge of the dissent in this case and of Judge Martin's dissenting opinion in Rivero is not that we haven't published enough opinions correctly stating the law concerning reasonableness review. It is, instead, that the results of our sentence review have somehow sent a message contrary to the neutral principles that we have announced in our opinions, including published ones.Given that it is the result that matters under the dissent's theory, it makes no difference whether the result comes in a published or an unpublished opinion. Our unpublished opinions are, after all, as readily accessible online as our published ones. Ironically, Judge Martin's dissenting opinion in Rivero, like the majority opinion in that case, is itself unpublished. Still, that unpublished opinion adequately sends her message about her position on the sending-a-message theory.
18. The dissent attempts to bolster its argument with dicta from separate opinions of another judge and a former judge of this Court and the views of two of the more than 1.2 million attorneys in this country. The attempt fails.First, the dissent discusses at length Judge Martin's concurrence in the judgment in United States v. Early, 686 F.3d 1219 (11th Cir.2012). See Dissenting Op. at 55, 68, 75–77 & n.11, 83. Judge Martin based her concurring opinion's argument in part on a statement that, as of 2012, she had “found [no cases] in which we vacated an upward variance from the Sentencing Guidelines on reasonableness grounds.” Early, 686 F.3d at 1223 (Martin, J ., concurring in the judgment). We do not question the good faith of our colleague in making that statement, but the fact is that the Valdes, Lopez, and Gardner decisions, all vacating upward variance sentences as unreasonable, were on the books well before 2012 when Early was decided. See Valdes, 500 F.3d at 1291 (decided in 2007); Lopez, 343 F. App'x at 484 (decided in 2009); Gardner, 255 F. App'x at 475 (decided in 2007).Next, the dissent suggests that Judge Barkett “identified the same problem” as Judge Martin “even before Irey was decided,” pointing to Judge Barkett's separate opinion in United States v. Docampo. Dissenting Op. at 75 n.10; see also 573 F.3d 1091, 1110 (11th Cir.2009) (Barkett, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). The dissent quotes very carefully and selectively from Judge Barkett's Docampo opinion to make that argument, as it must because what she actually argued in it is not the position the dissent advances. In Docampo, the defendant was sentenced at almost the exact mid-point of the advisory guidelines range. Docampo, 573 F.3d at 1093, 1095 (affirming sentence of 270 months, just below the midpoint of Docampo's guidelines range of 248 to 295 months). And so Judge Barkett's argument—which she made just after the language the dissent quotes—was that “[w]e should ․ be willing to find that, in a case that warrants it, a within-guidelines sentence is greater than necessary to serve the objectives of sentencing.” Id. at 1110 (Barkett, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (emphasis added; quotation marks omitted). Here, of course, the basis of the dissent's position is that a within-guidelines sentence—and only a within-guidelines sentence—is reasonable. See, e.g., Dissenting Op. at 56–60 (arguing that the district court's failure to give the guidelines “real weight” renders Rosales–Bruno's sentence unreasonable). Both Judge Barkett's opinion in Docampo and the dissent in this case are wrong.Finally, the dissent cites two pieces of what it refers to as “scholarly commentary” that it believes “echo[ ]” Judge Martin's concern. Dissenting Op. at 76 n.11; see also Adam Shajnfeld, The Eleventh Circuit's Selective Assault on Sentencing Discretion, 65 U. Miami L.Rev. 1133 (2011); Daniel N. Marx, Unwarranted Disparity in Appellate Review of Non–Guidelines Sentences for Substantive Reasonableness, 29 No. 2 Westlaw J. White–Collar Crime 1 (2014). Well, it is at least commentary. In his article, lawyer Shajnfeld makes the same error as the dissent and Judge Martin, claiming that we have never found a sentence “unreasonably severe.” Shajnfeld, supra, at 1155. He ignores Valdes, Lopez, and Gardner all of which predate his article. See Valdes, 500 F.3d at 1291 (decided in 2007); Lopez, 343 F. App'x at 484 (decided in 2009); Gardner, 255 F. App'x at 475 (decided in 2007). And it is passing strange that the dissent would rely at all on an article whose central premise is that Irey—which our dissenting colleague joined in full—was wrongly decided. See generally Shajnfeld, supra.Attorney Marx's article echoes Judge Martin more literally, quoting the same section of her opinion that the dissent quotes. Marx, supra, at 7 (quoting Early, 686 F.3d at 1223 (Martin, J, concurring in the judgment)); see Dissenting Op. at 76. But it appears unlikely that Judge Martin, writing about this Court in 2012, could have been talking about the same cases Marx has in mind, because his article, which focuses on sentences in white-collar crime cases, discusses what he calls an “unwarranted disparity” between two cases decided in 2014—one by the Sixth Circuit and the other by the D.C. Circuit. See generally Marx, supra. (comparing United States v. Musgrave, 761 F.3d 602 (6th Cir.2014) and United States v. Ransom, 756 F.3d 770 (D.C.Cir.2014)). Other than quoting Judge Martin's separate opinion in Early, Marx's article mentions our circuit only in passing, saying that it is one of the circuits that have “vacated below-guidelines sentences for white-collar offenders as being substantively unreasonable.” Marx, supra, at 6 (quotation marks omitted). We are indeed one of several circuits that have done that. The article fails to even mention our cases vacating upward variances. Instead, it relies on a 2012 report that it states “did not cite any cases in which appeals courts had vacated above-guidelines sentences in fraud cases as being substantively unreasonable.” Id. (emphasis added). That is not true. Both the report and the article citing it came out after our 2007 decision in Valdes, where we vacated as substantively unreasonable an upward variance sentence for a bank-fraud conviction. See 500 F.3d at 1292 (“Nelson Valdes pled guilty and was convicted of bank fraud․”).
21. Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court 420 (1st ed. 1889).Instead of questioning the accuracy of any of the sentencing data cited in this opinion, the dissent quotes the old cliché that “[t]here are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Dissenting Op. at 83 n.14. That hackneyed formulation does not fit here because the sentencing facts and sentencing review facts cited in this opinion are not mere statistical extrapolations. Given how clearly the actual facts refute its thesis, the dissent should instead be bemoaning “facts, damned facts, and more facts.”
2. And, as discussed in more detail in Part I.C., it is not the mere fact that the district court varied from the Guidelines on remand that draws my criticism; rather, it is “the degree” and “extent” of the variance with which I am properly concerned. See Gall, 552 U.S. at 47, 128 S.Ct. at 595.
3. In reaching our conclusion in Valdes, we relied on United States v. McVay, 447 F.3d 1348, 1357 (11th Cir.2006), which was subsequently abrogated by the Supreme Court, see Gall, 552 U.S. at 46, 128 S.Ct. at 594. But when Valdes appealed the sentence imposed on remand, we had the opportunity to clarify that, even after Gall, a defendant's “criminal history alone would not justify an upward departure as such behavior is accounted for through [the defendant's] criminal history category.” United States v. Valdes, 298 F. App'x 927, 930 (11th Cir.2008) (per curiam) (emphasis added).
5. Irey candidly recognizes the internal tension in the rule that the reason for a variance must be sufficiently compelling to support the degree of the variance but that a proportionality requirement is prohibited. See 612 F.3d at 1186–87 & n.14.