Opinion ID: 5175679
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Guideline Issues

Text: Turning to the merits, we agree with Loving that the district court made procedural errors in calculating a total offense level of 24. First, the court did not explain why it adopted this total oﬀense level. District courts must calculate a defendant’s total oﬀense level in a manner that allows appellate review of the reasoning. United States v. Titus, 821 F.3d 930, 933–34 (7th Cir. 2016), citing United States v. Bokhari, 430 F.3d 861, 863–64 (7th Cir. 2005). The sentencing transcript here does not show which of two possible paths the court followed in reaching oﬀense level 24. The court could have adopted a total oﬀense level of 24 from the PSR despite the parties’ agreement to reduce it by one level based on timely acceptance of responsibility. Or the court could have reduced the PSR’s calculation by one level in light of the parties’ agreement on the third acceptance level, but then accepted the government’s reliance on § 3C1.2, application note 6, to add a level to the guideline calculation rather than use an upward departure. The court’s explanation at sentencing could be read as indicating that both occurred, but that would have been internally inconsistent. Adopting both the calculations in the PSR and the government’s argument for an extra level under the application note would have resulted in an oﬀense level of 25, not 24: o Base oﬀense level 24 o Reckless endangerment +2 enhancement, § 3C1.2 o Acceptance of -2 responsibility, § 3E1.1 8 No. 21-1382 o Enhancement for +1 endangering multiple people, § 3C1.2, appl. n.6 Total oﬀense level 25 This absence of an explicit rationale for the total oﬀense level could itself be ground for remand. When the record “lacks suﬃcient clarity for this court to determine … the district court’s methodology and ﬁnal determinations pertaining to total oﬀense level,” remand may be needed for the district court to make explicit its calculations. Titus, 821 F.3d at 934– 35 (remanding for resentencing where district court did not make explicit the factual ﬁndings that led to the total oﬀense level) (internal citation omitted). In this case, however, remand is not based only on the absence of an explanation. Both possible rationales were erroneous for other reasons. First, if the court adopted the calculations from the PSR, then it erred by failing to explain why it declined to apply the further one-level reduction for acceptance of responsibility, to which the parties had agreed under U.S.S.G. § 3E1.1(b). In its current form, § 3E1.1 allows for a reduction of as much as three levels in the total oﬀense level based on the defendant’s acceptance of responsibility. Section 3E1.1(a) provides for a two-level reduction. A third level is available if the oﬀense level before applying § 3E1.1(a) is 16 or greater and if the government makes a motion to apply the third level. Loving argues that the court must grant the third-level reduction upon the government’s motion, citing United States v. Mount, 675 F.3d 1052, 1057 (7th Cir. 2012). After we decided Mount, however, the Sentencing Commission amended the commentary to § 3E1.1 to clarify that the district court has the authority to No. 21-1382 9 deny a government motion for a third level. U.S.S.G. App. C., Amend. 775 (Nov. 1, 2013), discussed in United States v. Vargas, 961 F.3d 566, 580 (2d Cir. 2020). Amendment 775 added a paragraph to Note 6 to § 3E1.1 using the phrase “the court in deciding whether to grant the motion.…” The Sentencing Commission’s explanation of the amendment discussed the conﬂict between our decision in Mount and United States v. Williamson, 598 F.3d 227, 230 (5th Cir. 2010), and explained that the amendment was intended to resolve the conﬂict against the Mount position by endorsing a sentencing court’s discretion to deny such a motion. That amendment to the commentary eﬀectively superseded our holding in Mount that the third level is mandatory upon the government’s proper motion. The problem here is that the district court denied the government’s motion without giving any explanation. Even under Amendment 775, it is clear that a sentencing court must explain a denial of such a motion by the government. See Vargas, 961 F.3d at 584. That did not happen here. Second, and on the other hand, if the court accepted the calculation from the government’s sentencing memorandum, where it urged a one-level increase to Loving’s oﬀense level based on application note 6 of § 3C1.2, the decision runs into a diﬀerent error: In that event, the court improperly used one of the departure provisions of the Sentencing Guidelines to calculate Loving’s advisory range. Since the Guidelines were deemed advisory in United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005), we have often said that sentencing courts are no longer required to engage in traditional departure analysis. E.g., United States v. Pankow, 884 F.3d 785, 793–94 (7th Cir. 2018); United States v. Brown, 732 F.3d 781, 786 (7th Cir. 2013). That does not 10 No. 21-1382 mean, however, that departure provisions are entirely obsolete. Departure provisions have always played an integral role in the advisory guideline sentencing system. E.g., Pankow, 884 F.3d at 793 (“we have emphasized that ‘district courts can still take guidance from the departure provisions … and apply them by way of analogy when assessing the § 3553(a) factors’”), citing Brown, 732 F.3d at 786. But even after Booker, the ﬁrst step in the sentencing process has remained correct calculation of the applicable guideline range. Rosales-Mireles v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 1897, 1904 (2018); see U.S.S.G. § 1B1.1(a) (providing application instructions for Sentencing Guidelines). It is not until the second step, which is optional, that the court may consider the advice in the Sentencing Guidelines about potential departures. U.S.S.G. § 1B1.1(b). Finally, at step three, the court must consider the sentencing factors listed under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) and determine, in light of those factors, whether to accept or reject the advice of the Guidelines. U.S.S.G. § 1B1.1(c); Peugh v. United States, 569 U.S. 530, 536 (2013). The problem with the district court’s use here of the relevant departure provision—application note 6 of U.S.S.G. § 3C1.2—is that the court seems to have applied it at the wrong step of the sentencing process. Nothing prohibited the court from considering the provision—which suggests an upward departure may be appropriate if the defendant endangered multiple people during ﬂight—at step two of the sentencing process, and using it to explain an upward variance from the guideline range. See United States v. Ramirez, 983 F.3d 959, 962 (7th Cir. 2020) (aﬃrming sentence where court relied on U.S.S.G. § 3C1.2, application note 6, to vary from correct guideline range). In this case, however, the district court No. 21-1382 11 relied on this provision at step one of the sentencing process to increase Loving’s calculated oﬀense level and to anchor his advisory guideline range to “57 to 71 months.” This was a procedural error. To be sure, the diﬀerence between adding one oﬀense level in calculating the guideline range and applying an upward departure equivalent to one oﬀense level might seem hypertechnical to some. That diﬀerence could easily be deemed harmless if the district court had acknowledged the diﬀerence and had indicated clearly that it would have no effect on the ﬁnal sentence imposed. See United States v. HinesFlagg, 789 F.3d 751, 757 (7th Cir. 2015) (error in guideline calculation not shown to be harmless). Under either approach, the Sentencing Guidelines as a whole would point toward the same eﬀective range for a prison sentence. In this case, however, we simply cannot deem harmless the apparent confusion between guideline range and upward departure. First, at sentencing, the district court said three times that Loving deserved a sentence within the guideline range. Those statements are strong evidence that the erroneously calculated guideline range inﬂuenced the court’s chosen sentence. See Molina-Martinez v. United States, 758 U.S. 189, 199 (2016) (explaining that if a court explains the chosen sentence relative to the sentencing range, “then the Guidelines are in a real sense the basis for the sentence”) (emphasis in original). Second, as explained above, each of the two possible paths toward calculating the total oﬀense level as 24 included an error. Finally, we cannot infer, based on the district court’s terse comments about the sentencing factors under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) that the court believed a 71-month prison sentence would be appropriate regardless of the correct guideline range. 12 No. 21-1382 We express no opinion about whether 71 months in prison is an appropriate sentence for Loving. The PSR shows that he endangered multiple people during his ﬂight, ﬁrst by dragging an oﬃcer as he drove away and then by driving through the scene of a recent car accident. On remand, after considering the government’s motion for the third level of an acceptance-of-responsibility reduction and calculating Loving’s correct guideline range, the district court may consider a possible upward departure or variance and must consider the factors under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). Both paths allow consideration of the circumstances of Loving’s oﬀenses and his attempted ﬂight, as long as the path of the court’s reasoning is clear. Loving’s sentence is VACATED and the case is REMANDED for resentencing.