Opinion ID: 165817
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The District Court's Jurisdiction to Resentence Defendant

Text: 16 Federal courts are not courts of general jurisdiction; they have only the power that is authorized by Article III of the Constitution and the statutes enacted by Congress pursuant thereto. Bender v. Williamsport Area Sch. Dist., 475 U.S. 534, 541, 106 S.Ct. 1326, 89 L.Ed.2d 501 (1986). For that reason, every federal appellate court has a special obligation to satisfy itself not only of its own jurisdiction, but also that of the lower courts in a cause under review, even though the parties are prepared to concede it. Id. (quotations omitted). In general, we must address questions pertaining to our or a lower court's jurisdiction before proceeding to the merits. See Tenet v. Doe, ___ U.S. ___, ___ n. 4, 125 S.Ct. 1230, 1235 n. 4, 161 L.Ed.2d 82, ___ n. 4 (2005). 2 Accordingly, we begin by analyzing the district court's jurisdiction to resentence Defendant on July 9, 2004. 17 A district court is authorized to modify a Defendant's sentence only in specified instances where Congress has expressly granted the court jurisdiction to do so, so [a] district court does not have inherent power to resentence defendants at any time. United States v. Blackwell, 81 F.3d 945, 947, 949 (10th Cir.1996) (quotations omitted). Thus, in the case at bar the district court lacked jurisdiction to resentence Defendant based upon its desire to prevent a manifest injustice. 18 The district court also did not have jurisdiction to resentence Defendant under any statutory provision. 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c) provides only three jurisdictional grants under which a court may modify a term of imprisonment once it has been imposed. 3 A court may modify a sentence: (1) in certain circumstances upon motion of the Director of the Bureau of Prisons; (2) to the extent otherwise expressly permitted by statute or by Rule 35 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure; or (3) in cases where the applicable sentencing range has subsequently been lowered by the Sentencing Commission. Id. at § 3582(c)(1)(A), (c)(1)(B), (c)(2). Avenues one and three are inapposite to the resentencing that the district court performed in the instant case. Avenue two offers Fed.R.Crim.P. 35 as the only potential source of authority to support the district court's modification of Defendant's sentence. 19 Fed.R.Crim.P. 35 empowers a court to correct or reduce a Defendant's sentence in two specified instances. Section (a) provides that [ w ] ithin 7 days after sentencing, the court may correct a sentence that resulted from arithmetical, technical, or other clear error. 4 Fed.R.Crim.P. 35(a) (emphasis added). Section (b) grants a court authority to reduce a sentence to reflect a defendant's post-sentencing substantial assistance. Fed.R.Crim.P. 35(b). Section (b) is inapposite to the instant case. Thus, the dispositive question in determining whether the district court had jurisdiction to resentence Defendant is whether Fed.R.Crim.P. 35(a) divests a district court of jurisdiction to correct sentencing errors more than seven days after sentencing. The history of the rule and case law interpreting the provision make clear that Rule 35(a) provides a district court with jurisdiction to correct sentencing errors for only seven days after the court first orally sentenced a defendant. 20 Before the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 became effective, Rule 35 allowed a district court to correct an illegal sentence at any time and to correct a sentence imposed in an illegal manner within 120 days of certain triggers. See Fed.R.Crim.P. 35, Rule Applicable to Offenses Committed Prior to Nov. 1, 1987. The Sentencing Reform Act deleted these provisions, however, such that the only circumstances in which a sentence could then be reduced were on remand after appeal or upon motion of the government to recognize a defendant's cooperation. Wright, King & Klein, Federal Practice and Procedure: Criminal 3d § 581; see United States v. Shank, 395 F.3d 466, 468 (4th Cir.2005), petition for cert. filed, (U.S. Apr. 25, 2005) (No. 04-1436). 21 In 1991, Rule 35 was amended to provide sentencing courts with a seven-day period in which to correct arithmetical, technical, or other clear error. Fed.R.Crim.P. 35, Advisory Committee Notes on 1991 Amendments. The authority to correct a sentence under this subdivision [wa]s intended to be very narrow and to extend only to those cases in which an obvious error or mistake ha[d] occurred.... Id. The subdivision [wa]s not intended to afford the court the opportunity to reconsider the application or interpretation of the sentencing guidelines or for the court simply to change its mind about the appropriateness of the sentence. Id. Nor should it be used to reopen issues previously resolved at the sentencing hearing through the exercise of the court's discretion with regard to the application of the sentencing guidelines. Id. 5 22 We have held that, for purposes of Rule 35, sentence is imposed upon a criminal defendant ... when the [district] court orally pronounces sentence from the bench. 6 United States v. Townsend, 33 F.3d 1230, 1231 (10th Cir.1994). Thus, a court may act pursuant to Rule 35(a) to correct a sentence only within seven days of orally pronouncing sentence. We have held that this seven-day time limit is jurisdictional. See Blackwell, 81 F.3d at 948 & n. 4; see also Townsend, 33 F.3d at 1231 ([Defendant] was sentenced on August 13, 1993.... Thus, the district court had jurisdiction to correct [Defendant]'s sentence for clerical or technical errors until August 20, 1993.). 23 In this case, the district court orally pronounced Defendant's original sentence on June 24, 2004. Defendant filed his Rule 35(a) motion on June 30, 2004. On July 6, 2004, the district court scheduled a hearing on that motion. At the hearing, which was held on July 9, 2004, the court denied Defendant's motion, but then sua sponte resentenced Defendant to the lower sentence. 24 Thus, in this case the district court scheduled a hearing on Defendant's motion to correct the original sentence within the seven-day period mandated by Rule 35(a). Though twelve calendar days elapsed between the original sentencing hearing and the district court's scheduling of a hearing on Defendant's motion, only seven days passed during that time for purposes of Rule 35(a). This is because Fed.R.Crim.P. 45 provides that if the period of time specified in a Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure is less than eleven days, intermediate Saturdays, Sundays, and legal holidays should be excluded. Fed.R.Crim.P. 45(a)(2). Therefore, for purposes of Rule 35(a) the seventh day after the district court orally pronounced sentence was July6 — the day that the court scheduled a hearing on Defendant's motion to correct his sentence. 25 Similarly, for purposes of Rule 35(a) the district court resentenced Defendant on the tenth day (the fifteenth calendar day) after the court orally sentenced Defendant. Because the July 9 resentencing was conducted more than seven Rule 35(a) days following the June 24 sentencing, the district court lacked jurisdiction under Rule 35(a) to resentence Defendant at that time. 26 The fact that Defendant made a motion for resentencing within the seven-day period, and that the district court scheduled a hearing on that motion within the seven-day period, did not extend the district court's jurisdiction to dispose of the motion beyond the seven-day period. Rule 35(a) makes no provision for the extension of this period based on a timely motion by a party. The plain language of the rule — which states that [w]ithin 7 days after sentencing, the court may correct a sentence, Fed. R. Crim P. 35(a) (emphasis added) — makes clear that the seven-day period limits the time in which a court may impose a corrected sentence, not the time in which a party may make a motion for such a sentence. That Rule 35(a) speaks in terms of actions by a court, and not a party, is telling: The other portions of Rule 35 speak of actions by a party, so the omission of such terms in Rule 35(a) appears intentional. See Fed.R.Crim.P. 35(b)(1) (Upon the government's motion....); Fed.R.Crim.P. 35(b)(2) (same). 27 Many courts of appeals have rejected the argument that filing a motion to correct a sentence or scheduling a hearing on such a motion within seven days of the pronouncement of sentence can result in the extension of the period in which a court may act pursuant to Rule 35(a). See, e.g., United States v. Wisch, 275 F.3d 620, 626 (7th Cir.2001) (The time limit is jurisdictional, and, furthermore, the motion must be ruled on by the district court within seven days, not simply filed with the clerk of court during that time.... [A] court's failure to rule is functionally equivalent to an outright denial on the merits, thus making the judgment final on the date the district judge's power to alter the sentence expired.) (quotations and citation omitted); United States v. Morrison, 204 F.3d 1091, 1092, 1094 (11th Cir.2000) (holding that a district court lacks jurisdiction under Rule 35 to correct a sentence if the court sets the sentence aside within seven days of orally pronouncing it in open court but does not impose a new sentence until more than seven days have passed, and concluding that [w]ithout imposition of a new and corrected sentence before the seven days were up, the court's order vacating the initial sentence withered and is of no effect, such that the defendant was entitled to have his original sentence reimposed); United States v. Morillo, 8 F.3d 864, 869 (1st Cir.1993) ([I]f a motion is timely made but is not decided within the seven-day period, the judge's power to act under the rule subsides and the pending motion is deemed to be denied as of that date.). 7 28 Our holding in United States v. Corey, 999 F.2d 493, 496 (10th Cir.1993) (holding that filing a motion under the former Rule 35(c) delays the starting point of the period for filing an appeal until the district court disposes of the motion), appears at first glance to support the argument that filing a Rule 35(a) motion extends the district court's jurisdiction to rule on the motion beyond the seven-day period. See also United States v. Smith, 929 F.2d 1453, 1457-58 (10th Cir.1991) (allowing the district court to resentence a defendant at a time when the defendant had not yet begun to serve his sentence and the government was permitted to take an appeal); United States v. Carmouche, 138 F.3d 1014, 1016 (5th Cir.1998) (holding that a timely rule 35(c) motion renders an otherwise final order of a district court nonfinal until disposition of that motion). However, the 2002 amendments to Fed. R.App. P. 4(b) undermine this argument. 29 Fed. R.App. P. 4(b)(1) provides that [i]n a criminal case, a defendant's notice of appeal must be filed within ten days of the entry of either the judgment or the order being appealed. 8 Fed. R.App. P. 4(b)(1). Rule 4(b) specifically provides that if a defendant makes one of several timely motions, the ten-day period will not begin to run until after the court decides that motion. Fed. R.App. P. 4(b)(3). 30 A 2002 amendment to Rule 4(b) states, The filing of a motion under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 35(a) does not suspend the time for filing a notice of appeal from a judgment of conviction. Fed. R.App. P. 4(b)(5). The 2002 amendment to Fed. R.App. P. 4(b) bolsters our conclusion that Fed. R.App. P. 35(a) provides only a seven-day period in which a court could correct a sentence. See Fed.R.Crim.P. 35, Advisory Committee Notes for 1991 Amendments. 9 By providing that a motion to correct a sentence does not lengthen the time for a defendant to appeal, Rule 4 ensures that a defendant will always have time to file a notice of appeal after the seven days for correcting sentence have elapsed but before the ten days for filing a notice of appeal have run. 31 For these reasons, we conclude that the district court did not have jurisdiction to resentence Defendant on July 9. Ordinarily, in such a case, we strike down the later sentence and remand the case with instructions to reinstate the defendant's original sentence. See Blackwell, 81 F.3d at 949; Townsend, 33 F.3d at 1231. 10 However, we may order the reinstatement of the original sentence only if that sentence is permissible. Accordingly, we would next examine whether the district court erred in imposing the June 24 sentence, unless Defendant has waived his right to appeal from those errors. So, we next turn our attention to Defendant's waiver of his appellate rights. 32