Opinion ID: 785471
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Scope of the Remand in Barresi I

Text: 25 The government contended, and the district court agreed, that Barresi I 's remand for reassessment of the magnitude of the departure — which increased only Barresi's prison term — should be interpreted to mean that the court could modify only the prison term. Barresi disagrees and argues in addition that Barresi I 's invalidation of two of the four rationales on which the district court had relied, in deciding that the departure should be eight steps, should be interpreted to mean that the departure would necessarily be smaller if the court relied only on the two permissible grounds. We reject both sides' contentions that Barresi I so limited the district court on remand. 26 The nature of the issues for resolution in the district court on a remand from the court of appeals depends principally on the issues that had been presented in the appeal and the directions given by the court of appeals in ordering further proceedings. A resentencing usually should be de novo when a Court of Appeals reverses one or more convictions and remands for resentencing or otherwise effectively undoes the entire knot of calculation underlying the original sentencing. United States v. Quintieri, 306 F.3d 1217, 1228 (2d Cir.2002) (internal quotation marks omitted) (emphasis in original), cert. denied, 539 U.S. 902, 123 S.Ct. 2246, 156 L.Ed.2d 110 (2003); see, e.g., United States v. Carpenter, 320 F.3d 334, 341 (2d Cir.2003). However, absent explicit language in the mandate to the contrary, resentencing should be limited when the Court of Appeals upholds the underlying convictions but determines that a sentence has been erroneously imposed and remands to correct that error. United States v. Quintieri, 306 F.3d at 1228 (emphasis in original); see, e.g., United States v. Stanley, 54 F.3d 103, 108 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 516 U.S. 891, 116 S.Ct. 238, 133 L.Ed.2d 166 (1995). If the remand specifies the nature of the correction to be made, the scope of the issues on remand is thereby limited. 27 In Barresi I, this Court found that the district court had considered two improper factors in determining the magnitude of the departure. We did not vacate the conviction or the original sentence, however, but simply remanded for reassess[ment] or reconsideration of the magnitude of the departure without reliance on the improper factors, 316 F.3d at 76, and for resentencing, id. at 71. In so doing, we expressly declined to rule on the question — explicitly presented by Barresi — of whether a departure to the same extent could be found reasonable if based solely on the two permissible factors that had led the court to depart. See id. at 75. The implication of our decision to remand for reassessment and resentencing without ruling on the reasonableness question was thus that, on the record before us, a departure to the same extent based only on the two permissible factors could be reasonable. Had we been of the contrary view, it would have been judicially inefficient to remand without foreclosing that result — especially given our closing words that the district court's resentencing after the required reassessment would be a decision to which great deference is due, id. at 76. Accordingly, we reject Barresi's contention that Barresi I meant that the eight-step departure could not be justified by reliance solely on the two permissible factors, i.e., nonmonetary harm to Barresi's victim and misdirection of law enforcement efforts. 28 In remanding for resentencing, however, Barresi I plainly envisioned that the district court could conclude that a smaller departure was warranted, and our opinion was silent as to the methods by which the district court could adjust Barresi's sentence if it determined that less than an eight-step departure, or a sentence below the top of the range thereby reached, was warranted by reliance solely on the two permissible factors. In the absence of language to the effect that the district court could adjust only Barresi's term of imprisonment, we think the appropriate inference is that any legally permissible adjustment could be made in order to remedy the error. Accordingly, because we conclude, as discussed in Part II.C. below, that a supervised-release-term adjustment was available, we reject the view of the government and the district court that Barresi I foreclosed modification of the supervised-release term imposed on Barresi. 29