Opinion ID: 203159
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Role of the Guidelines

Text: The notion that a rule of advance notice would inappropriately incline judges toward the Guidelines is also seriously flawed. In multiple cases this term, the Supreme Court has explicitly confirmed that the Guidelines remain a central part of the sentencing process post-Booker. The Guidelines are the starting point and the initial benchmark for sentencing decisions, Gall v. United States, 128 S. Ct. 586, 596 (2007), entitled to respectful consideration, Kimbrough v. United States, 128 S. Ct. 558, 570 (2007), because in the ordinary case, the [Sentencing] Commission's recommendation of a sentencing range will 'reflect a rough approximation of sentences that might achieve § 3553(a)'s objectives,' id. at 574 (quoting Rita, 127 S. Ct. at 2465). See also United States v. Jiménez-Beltre, 440 F.3d 514, 518 (1st Cir. 2006 (en banc) (holding that the district court normally should begin with a Guidelines calculation). The majority does not dispute the continuing centrality of the Guidelines to the sentencing process. Indeed, they acknowledge the Guidelines' gravitational pull. They worry, however, that an advance notice requirement will increase the Guidelines' pull on district court judges and hence could compromise the changes in the sentencing process effected by the Supreme Court in Booker and its progeny. The suggestion that district court judges would shy away from sua sponte variances as -28- a matter of convenience is misguided. It is inconceivable to me that, having given the Guidelines due consideration and finding them lacking, a judge would suppress the independent judgment required by the Supreme Court simply to avoid providing the parties with reasonable prehearing notice. The modest burden of preparing a brief notice or, in the rare case, continuing an already convened sentencing hearing to a later date would not deter a judge from imposing a variance. Rather than justifying less notice, the broader sentencing discretion afforded to district judges post-Booker requires that defendants be given the same advance warning of the court's contemplated rationale for deviating from the Guidelines that Burns required for sentencing departures. As the panel opinion observed, the need for notice remains acute because of the virtually limitless number of factors that may be used to support a variance. Although notice under Rule 32 is owed to both the defendant and the government, the defendant's interest in preparing the most persuasive argument available against an upward variance is obviously of particular significance. Defendants should not be placed in the untenable position of trying to anticipate and negate every conceivable ground on which the district court might choose to depart on its own initiative or risk allowing a critical sentencing determination [to] go untested by the adversarial process. Burns, 501 U.S. at 137. -29- The majority acknowledges that there are some cases where, as a matter of fairness, notice must be provided. But the majority's proposed approach – providing notice or granting a continuance when the court proposes to rely on a ground that would unfairly surprise competent and reasonably prepared counsel – has at least three serious flaws. First, it gives no guidance at all to district judges. Without an anchor in either the Due Process Clause or a bright-line rule, the majority's standard offers sentencing judges no framework within which to evaluate the need for notice. Fairness, surprise and reasonable preparation are all elusive concepts that individual judges will see differently. Second, the ambiguity of the standard leaves every nonGuidelines sentence that was imposed without notice open to challenge on appeal. Surprise arguably exists any time the court announces, for the first time at the sentencing hearing, its sua sponte intention to deviate from the Guidelines, and surprise will rarely be deemed fair by a defendant who has a right, under Rule 32, to comment on matters affecting the length of his incarceration. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 32(i)(1)(C). Debate over what it means for counsel to be reasonably prepared for a sentencing hearing surely will consume more judicial time than judges would expend in giving prehearing notice. Moreover, the standard is so vague that appellate courts could rarely, if ever, conclude that the sentencing court had erred. -30- Third, the majority suggests that most cases would not involve unfair surprise because courts typically would base variances on [g]arden variety considerations such as the likelihood of recidivism or the seriousness of the crime. But the commonality of such factors is not the issue. What matters is how the court is processing all of the information relevant to those factors and its inclination to take an exceptional view of them. In the absence of advance notice, neither the defendant nor the government has reason to anticipate that the usual factors may lead to a non-Guidelines sentence, and advocating for a lower sentence or higher sentence within a Guidelines range is not the same as advocating against the court's inclination to sentence outside the Guidelines. That difference is reflected in the new arguments asserted in Vega's en banc brief, which specifically emphasize why the court's concerns did not require a sentence beyond the Guidelines. In sum, an easily administered bright-line rule requiring advance notice in all cases would promote both actual fairness in sentencing and the perception of fair sentencing, Gall, 128 S. Ct. at 597, without undue burdens on the courts. The Supreme Court already has recognized the need for a reasonable notice requirement in the context of departures. In the post-Booker era, when the court has broader discretion to go outside the Guidelines, notice remains a critical component of the defendant's right to -31- meaningfully comment on the appropriateness of a non-Guidelines sentence. I therefore respectfully dissent. -32-