Opinion ID: 791972
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Statement of Reasons when the District Court Departs

Text: 25 18 U.S.C. § 3553(c), which Booker left unimpaired, see United States v. Crosby, 397 F.3d 103, 116 (2d Cir.2005), provides, as we have noted, that a district court, at the time of sentencing, shall state in open court the reasons for its imposition of the particular sentence. The section further provides that if the sentence ... is not of the kind, or is outside the range, described in subsection (a)(4), which refers to the Sentencing Guidelines or, in the case of a violation of probation or supervised release, policy statements issued by the United States Sentencing Commission pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 994(a)(3), the sentencing court must state the specific reason for the imposition of a sentence different from that described, which reasons must also be stated with specificity in the written order of judgment and commitment. 18 U.S.C. § 3553(c)(2); see also United States v. Cervantes, 878 F.2d 50, 54 (2d Cir.1989) (noting that Congress intended that the most detailed explanation be set forth for a sentence beyond the boundary of the Guideline range). While we do not require sentencing judges to incant the specific language used in the Guidelines[,] [i]t is necessary ... that the court clearly ... specify its reasons for departing. Id. at 54 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). 26 Section 3553(c)(2) applies to the sentencing in this case, as the government concedes, because, inter alia, the section refers to sentences outside the ranges that are suggested by the Sentencing Commission through applicable policy statements for violations of supervised release. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 3553(c)(2), 3553(a)(4)(B). Lewis's was just such a sentence. 27 We think, however, that a court's statement of its reasons for going beyond non-binding policy statements in imposing a sentence after revoking a defendant's supervised release term need not be as specific as has been required when courts departed from guidelines that were, before Booker, considered to be mandatory. Indeed, regarding 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)'s requirement that courts consider the Sentencing Commission's relevant policy statements in imposing a sentence for violation of supervised release, some of our prior cases have take[n] a deferential approach and refrain[ed] from imposing any rigorous requirement of specific articulation by the sentencing judge. Fleming, 397 F.3d at 99; see also Pelensky, 129 F.3d at 69 (noting that [b]ecause Chapter Seven policy statements are merely advisory and non-binding ... `the district court need not make the explicit, detailed findings required when it departs upward from a binding guideline') (quoting United States v. Anderson, 15 F.3d 278, 284 (2d Cir.1994)) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). Insofar as a court's consideration of the relevant policy statements, and its findings upon which it departed from the range recommended by those statements, need not be as explicit in this situation, it seems to us to follow that its statement of reasons need not be as specific. 28