Opinion ID: 4533869
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Challenges Under Gunter Step One

Text: Jackson argues first that the District Court failed to calculate the Guidelines range for his crimes. Before setting forth reasons for imposing its sentence, however, the District Court clearly stated that it “adopt[ed] the pre-sentence investigation report without change.” App. 186. Jackson contends that our precedent requires the District Court to calculate the Guidelines range explicitly on the record of the sentencing. Jackson is wrong. Our case law makes clear that a district court can satisfy the first Gunter step by, at a minimum, explicitly calculating the Guidelines range itself or stating that it had adopted the PSR’s Guidelines calculation. See, e.g., United States v. Weatherspoon, 696 F.3d 416, 419 (3d Cir. 2012) (noting that while “the District Court did not explicitly calculate or adopt a particular Guidelines range . . . . , after brief argument, it accepted the recommended sentence of 120 months”). Furthermore, Jackson does not argue that either the Guidelines range calculation in the PSR or the District Court’s statement that a sentence of 145 months’ imprisonment was within the Guidelines range was incorrect. Accordingly, even if we found that the District Court erred in not explicitly calculating the Guidelines range at the sentencing hearing, any such error was harmless. United States v. Langford, 516 F.3d 205, 215 (3d Cir. 2008) (“For the error to be harmless, it must be clear that the error did not affect the 9 district court’s selection of the sentence imposed.”). We therefore find that the District Court did not clearly err in adopting the Guidelines range calculation as set forth in the PSR.