Opinion ID: 4525100
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: standard of review

Text: We review the reasonableness of the district court’s sentences for an abuse of discretion, employing a two-step process. See United States v. Trailer, 827 F.3d 933, 935–36 (11th Cir. 2016) (per curiam). At the first step, we ensure that the district court did not commit a significant procedural error, such as miscalculating 7 Case: 19-10609 Date Filed: 04/14/2020 Page: 8 of 19 the Guidelines range, failing to consider the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factors, selecting a sentence based on clearly erroneous facts, or failing to explain its chosen sentences. See Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 51 (2007). If the district court’s decision contains no significant procedural error, we review the substantive reasonableness of the sentences “through the prism of abuse of discretion.” United States v. Pugh, 515 F.3d 1179, 1191 (11th Cir. 2008). “The party challenging a sentence has the burden of showing that the sentence is unreasonable in light of the entire record, the § 3553(a) factors, and the substantial deference afforded sentencing courts.” United States v. Rosales-Bruno, 789 F.3d 1249, 1256 (11th Cir. 2015). We likewise review for abuse of discretion the district court’s decision to order the federal sentences to run consecutively to Gomez’s state-imposed sentence. See United States v. Covington, 565 F.3d 1336, 1346 (11th Cir. 2009). Gomez argues that our standard of review for this issue should be de novo, citing our decisions in United States v. Perez, 956 F.2d 1098 (11th Cir. 1992) (per curiam), and United States v. Fuentes, 107 F.3d 1515 (11th Cir. 1997). Neither case instructed that we review de novo the issue that we face today. Our binding precedent is clear that the appropriate standard is abuse of discretion. Nevertheless, we take this opportunity to explain why. 8 Case: 19-10609 Date Filed: 04/14/2020 Page: 9 of 19 First, we note that Perez involved a sentence imposed under the mandatory Guidelines. There, the Guidelines required a concurrent sentence. 956 F.2d at 1103. But the district court stated that it had imposed consecutive sentences as a departure from the Guidelines. Id. So the question we addressed was “whether the district court ha[d] the authority to depart from the Sentencing Guidelines and order that [the defendants’] sentences be served consecutively.” Id. at 1103 (emphasis in original). Our de novo review in Perez, then, was of a purely legal question: whether the district court had authority to depart from the Guidelines to impose a consecutive sentence. The Perez issue is inapplicable here. Indeed, it is undisputed that the district court had the authority to order that Gomez’s federal sentences run consecutively to his state sentence. See 18 U.S.C. § 3584(a); U.S.S.G. § 5G1.3(d). The applicable guideline provides, as relevant here,3 that in a “case involving an undischarged term of imprisonment, the sentence for the instant offense may be imposed to run concurrently, partially concurrently, or consecutively to the prior undischarged term of imprisonment to achieve a reasonable punishment for the instant offense.” U.S.S.G. § 5G1.3(d). Therefore, the very wording of the guideline—“may be imposed”—anticipates that the district judge has discretion to impose a sentence 3 U.S.S.G. § 5G1.3(a)-(c) govern whether a sentence should be imposed consecutively or concurrently in situations that are not applicable here. 9 Case: 19-10609 Date Filed: 04/14/2020 Page: 10 of 19 consecutively, concurrently, or partially concurrently. And there is no legal standard other than abuse of discretion that would allow us to assess the legality of a sentence imposed under this guideline. So the issue in Gomez’s case is whether the district court’s decision that the sentences run consecutively to one another and to the undischarged state sentence was reasonable and adhered to the policy statements set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). Rather than trying to put ourselves into the district judge’s seat, we review such a judgment call under the familiar abuse-of-discretion standard. Perez does not support a different result. Neither does Fuentes. Like Gomez, Fuentes was sentenced in federal court to a term of imprisonment to run consecutively to a previously imposed state sentence. See Fuentes, 107 F.3d at 1517. On appeal, Fuentes argued that the district court had erred in failing to apply the then-current version of Section 5G1.3(b) of the Guidelines, while the Government argued that Section 5G1.3(b) had no bearing on the case. See id. at 1520. In reviewing the lower court’s decision, we concluded that “[t]he district court’s determination that Fuentes’ sentence should run consecutively to his undischarged state sentences resulted from its application of this guideline to the facts. We therefore review this determination de novo.” Id. As in Perez, our de novo review in Fuentes was of a purely legal question: whether the district court applied the proper Guidelines provisions. We were not tasked with reviewing whether the district court had acted reasonably pursuant to an 10 Case: 19-10609 Date Filed: 04/14/2020 Page: 11 of 19 indisputably applicable Guideline that endowed the district court to act within its discretion. We recognized this distinction in United States v. Andrews, 330 F.3d 1305, 1307 (11th Cir. 2003) (per curiam), cert. denied, 540 U.S. 1003 (2003). The defendant in that case, while on federal supervised release, was charged with drug possession, bribing a prison guard, and possession of a counterfeit driver’s license. See id. at 1306. The district court revoked Andrews’s supervised release while some of those charges were still pending and sentenced him to a 24-month term of imprisonment, ordering that the sentence be served consecutively to any term of imprisonment that he received for the substantive crimes he committed. See id. On appeal, Andrews challenged whether the district court “ha[d] the authority to impose a consecutive sentence to an unimposed, future sentence.” Id. We divided our review into two questions: “The first [was] whether the district court had the authority to impose the type of sentence it did. The second [was] whether, while acting within the scope of its authority, the district court committed some type of reversible error.” Id. at 1307. As to the latter, we applied the abuse-of-discretion standard. See id. (“As to the appropriateness of a consecutive sentence, Andrews has not shown that the district court abused its discretion in imposing a consecutive sentence in his case.”). 11 Case: 19-10609 Date Filed: 04/14/2020 Page: 12 of 19 As in Andrews, the issue we face here concerns whether the court erred “while acting within the scope of its authority.” Id. We therefore review the entirety of the district court’s sentencing order for an abuse of discretion.