Opinion ID: 799338
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Need to Avoid Unwarranted Sentencing Disparities

Text: A factor the district court should consider in fashioning an appropriate sentence is the need to avoid unwarranted sentence disparities among defendants with similar records who have been found guilty of similar conduct. 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(6). The explanation given by the district court for the sentence imposed on Ressam referred to sentences imposed on his co-conspirators, Haouari and Meskini, and on others convicted for similar misconduct, John Walker Lindh, Imran Mandhai, and most significantly, Jose Padilla. The district court expressly prefaced its discussion of others convicted of similar misconduct with the caveat that [t]hese cases involved different sets of facts and did not influence my decision in determining an appropriate sentence in this case, but the court nonetheless went on to describe the sentences at some length and compare each case to Ressam's. It is thus appropriate for us to do so as well. We conclude that those comparisons did not justify Ressam's sentence. Ressam's co-conspirators presented very different circumstances. Haouari did not present a parallel case because Haouari did not participate in the plan to blow up LAX nearly to the extent that Ressam did. Haouari was convicted of conspiracy for providing material support to Ressam on the strength of evidence showing that Ressam had made several remarks to Haouari indicating that Ressam was engaged in important business in America that involved fear and danger. Haouari, 2001 WL 1154714, at . Providing support to Ressam with the knowledge that Ressam was engaged in some kind of dangerous business in the United States was not the equivalent of planning out and taking several material steps toward the actual bombing of LAX. As for Meskini, while Ressam rejected a pre-trial plea offer and elected to put the government to its burden of proof, Meskini pled guilty to the charges in the indictment. Meskini, 319 F.3d at 91. The sentences of Irham Mandhai, John Walker Lindh, and Jose Padilla, other sentences identified by the district court, did not offer appropriate comparisons, either. Like Meskini, Mandhai and Lindh pled guilty. See United States v. Mandhai, 375 F.3d 1243, 1245 (11th Cir.2004) (noting that Mandhai pled guilty and received 11 years and 8 months); United States v. Lindh, 227 F.Supp.2d 565, 566, 571-72 (E.D.Va.2002) (sentencing Lindh, after he entered a plea of guilty, to 20 years, the statutory maximum on the counts charged). As noted above, the sentence of Jose Padilla was recently overturned by the Eleventh Circuit as substantively unreasonable, so that comparison is no longer available to support the sentence imposed on Ressam by the district court. More importantly, the decision was based in substantial part on comparisons to sentences imposed in other terrorism cases drawn by the district court in sentencing Padilla that were held by the Eleventh Circuit to be impermissible. Jayyousi, 657 F.3d at 1117. In comparing Padilla to criminals like David Hicks, Yahya Goba, and Imran Mandhai who had either been convicted of less serious offenses, lacked extensive criminal histories, or had pleaded guilty, the district court erred. Id. at 1118. We agree and reject the comparison of Ressam's sentence to defendants who pleaded guilty or were convicted of much less serious offenses.