Opinion ID: 777749
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Court should exercise its discretion to correct the error.

Text: 42 This Court should correct plain error only if it seriously affect[s] the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings. Jones, 527 U.S. at 389, 119 S.Ct. 2090. Other circuits have found that sentencing errors raised by the government on appeal require correction because failure to correct such errors may damage the reputation of the judicial system by allowing district courts to sentence without regard to the law, Barajas-Nunez, 91 F.3d at 833, allow similarly situated defendants to receive different sentences, id., or frustrate the Guidelines' goal of national sentencing uniformity, Perkins, 108 F.3d at 517. Circuits have chosen not to exercise their discretion to correct plain sentencing errors raised by the government on appeal, however, when refusal to remedy the error would provide a future incentive to the government to raise all available arguments below, United States v. Garcia-Pillado, 898 F.2d 36, 39-40 (5th Cir.1990), disapproved in part on other grounds, United States v. Calverley, 37 F.3d 160, 163 (5th Cir.1994), and when the difference in the length of the sentence imposed and the correct sentence was not significant enough to create a miscarriage of justice, United States v. Posters `N' Things Ltd., 969 F.2d 652, 663 (8th Cir.1992), aff'd 511 U.S. 513, 114 S.Ct. 1747, 128 L.Ed.2d 539 (1994). 43 While the government should have pursued other possible grouping options below even in the absence of case precedent specifically highlighting the potential application of § 3D1.2(d), the damage done by allowing an inappropriate sentence to stand in Gordon's case while refusing other similarly situated defendants the opportunity to fall within § 3D1.2(c) and § 3D1.3(a)'s less burdensome confines is too great to allow the error to remain uncorrected. This is especially true given the relative ease of correcting the sentencing error on remand, thus accentuating the potential unfairness of allowing the district court's error to stand. This Court vacates and remands for resentencing under § 3D1.2(d).