Opinion ID: 799338
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Recommendations and Offers by the Government

Text: It is for the same reason that we reject any comparison with the offer made by the government to Ressam, before trial, of 25 years in exchange for a guilty plea. Ressam argued at sentencing that the starting point to determine the appropriate downward departure for his cooperation should be that offer of 25 years, made at a time the government was uncertain of its ability to obtain a conviction. But Ressam rejected the offer, electing to require the government to prove its case. It did. After the conviction, the government made different sentencing recommendations at different times. At the 2005 sentencing, the government recommended a sentence of 35 years. In 2008, the government's sentencing memorandum filed in advance of the sentencing hearing recommended 45 years. At the hearing itself, the government withdrew that position and recommended life imprisonment. The district court did not cite any recommendation made by the government in explaining the sentence it imposed in either 2005 or 2008, and the government's recommendations were not binding on the district court in any event. Nonetheless, the pre-trial offer and the post-conviction recommendations have been referred to frequently in the argument on appeal, and the dissenting opinion refers, at 1100, to the 35-year recommendation made by the government in 2005. Ressam pointed to them to suggest that the district court's sentence of 22 years was reasonable because it was within a reasonable range of what the government itself sought. The government responded that it should not be bound, and that we should not be persuaded, by recommendations it made when the relevant circumstances appeared different. That was certainly true for the pre-trial plea offer, as discussed above. It was also true for the recommendation made in 2005, when there remained hope that Ressam might resume cooperation. We do not need to comment on the comparisons to the government's recommendations in 2008 of 45 years and then of life imprisonment. The 22-year sentence imposed by the district court in 2008 is too far below both of the sentence recommendations by the government at that time to obtain any support from them.