Opinion ID: 181821
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Spears and Sentencing Disparities

Text: We remanded Johnson’s case so that the district court could consider Johnson’s sentence in light of Spears, in which the Supreme Court clarified its holding in Kimbrough v. United States, 552 U.S. 85 (2007). Spears authorized district courts “to reject and vary categorically from the crack- 3 No. 09-2173 United States v. Johnson cocaine Guidelines based on a policy disagreement with those Guidelines.” Spears, 129 S. Ct. at 843–44. “Although Kimbrough allows district courts to consider the policies of the Guidelines and potential disparities resulting from them when determining an appropriate sentence, it by no means held that the failure to adopt one particular policy perspective renders a within-Guidelines sentence substantively unreasonable.” United States v. Jones, 370 F. App’x 577, 582 (6th Cir. 2010) (unpublished opinion). That conclusion is equally true of Spears. Using the Guidelines ratio is not automatically unreasonable. See United States v. Simmons, 587 F.3d 348, 365–66 (6th Cir. 2009) (“[T]he disparate treatment of crack and powder cocaine advised by the Guidelines is not per se unreasonable or unconstitutional.”), cert. denied, 130 S. Ct. 2116 (2010). “[W]hen a district court observes that the Guidelines are advisory and provides no indication that policy disagreements are not a proper basis to vary, then a sentence within the Guidelines range remains presumptively reasonable on appeal.” Id. at 364. On the other hand, when a district court indicates that policy disagreements are not a proper basis to vary, then the resulting sentence is not presumptively reasonable. More fundamentally, in such a case, the district court has committed procedural error by failing to appreciate the scope of its discretion. See United States v. Santillana, 540 F.3d 428, 431 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 129 S. Ct. 469 (2008). At Johnson’s resentencing, the district judge purported to recognize the advisory character of the Guidelines. See R. 100 (Resentencing Tr. at 25–26) (“I fully recognize my authority to vary from the crack/powder cocaine guidelines based solely on a policy disagreement with the 100 to one ratio. . . . The operative word in the Kimbrough case is may, m-a-y.”). However, the district judge’s remarks about the proper role of courts reveal his belief that a policy disagreement is not a proper 4 No. 09-2173 United States v. Johnson basis for a judge to vary. The district court agreed with the 100-to-one ratio, not for its substance, but because “Congress has said 100 to one is the appropriate ratio by directly establishing the mandatory minimums, which in effect engrafted a 100 to one ratio on the criminal statutes[,] or indirectly by not changing the law in the face of many opportunities to do so.” Id. at 26. After documenting the history of congressional inaction at length, the district judge reasoned that “the legislative branch of government is precisely the correct forum for this policy judgment. Courts are ill-equipped to make these decisions.” Id. at 28; see also id. at 30 (“I believe that decision is for the legislative and executive branches of the government and not for this Court.”). The district court concluded that deviating from the 100-to-one ratio would increase the probability of sentencing disparities among defendants who are sentenced for crack offenses because judges differ “within districts and across the country” and because judges cannot predict future changes that Congress might enact. Id. at 29. The district court’s analysis is contrary to Kimbrough, which explained that the crack guidelines were not based on the sort of “empirical data and national experience, guided by a professional staff with appropriate expertise,” that normally characterizes the institutional competence of the Commission. 552 U.S. at 109 (internal quotation marks omitted). Kimbrough clarified the irrelevance of congressional deference as well: the relevant statute “says nothing about the appropriate sentences” for crack offenders who fall between the statutory minimum and maximum and the Court “decline[d] to read any implicit directive into . . . congressional silence.” Id. at 103. In fact, the absence of a congressional mandate to use the 100-to-one ratio is what enabled the Supreme Court to afford discretion to district courts. Id. at 102–06. Finally, Kimbrough 5 No. 09-2173 United States v. Johnson denied that unwarranted disparities were a reason to tie district courts to the 100-to-one ratio. Id. at 106–08 (describing disparities as “a necessary cost of the remedy”). In light of Kimbrough, the district court’s decision constituted procedural error. While district judges have wide discretion in fixing a crack-to-powder ratio, they are not free to cede their discretion by concluding that their courtrooms are the wrong forum for setting a crack-to-powder ratio. See United States v. Herder, 594 F.3d 352, 363 (4th Cir. 2010) (holding that, when a district court uses the Guidelines ratio because “‘Congress has decided that that’s an appropriate ratio,’” it has “failed to recognize its discretion to sentence outside the crack cocaine Guidelines”); United States v. Jones, 531 F.3d 163, 180–82 (2d Cir. 2008) (remanding for resentencing due to ambiguity about the district court’s understanding of its discretion when it said the crack-powder disparity is “‘what it is, and I think the Court in general is wise to follow that directive and not substitute its own view’”); United States v. Tabor, 531 F.3d 688, 690–92 (8th Cir. 2008) (remanding for resentencing because Kimbrough later rejected each reason that the district judge had given for using the 100-to- one ratio: congressional intent, fear of sentencing disparities, and lack of institutional capacity). By failing to recognize the extent of its discretion, the district court did not comply with our instructions for the prior remand. On remand from this decision, the district court may, as a matter of policy, agree or disagree with the Guidelines ratio that designates crack offenses as more serious than powder offenses. But 6 No. 09-2173 United States v. Johnson it must not rely on the Guidelines for reasons that Kimbrough rejected, such as institutional competence, deference to Congress,1 or the risk that other judges will set different ratios.