Opinion ID: 3018620
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Gunter’s Step Two: Guidelines Departures

Text: Pre-Booker, district courts had the (limited) authority to depart from the mandatory Guidelines range if they found “that there exist[ed] an aggravating or mitigating circumstance . . . of a kind, or to a degree, not adequately taken into consideration by the Sentencing Commission in formulating the guidelines that . . . should result in a sentence different from that described.” U.S.S.G. § 5K2.0(a)(1).3 Our Court’s jurisdiction to review the denial of such departures depended on a district court’s reason for denial. If the judge believed s/he could not legally depart on Guidelines themselves (under U.S.S.G. § 4A1.3 and Ch. 5, Pt. K) as “departures,” and sentences outside the Guidelines range that are given in the exercise of a district court’s discretion pursuant to Booker (which may not have been supported by our departure jurisprudence) as “variances.” See United States v. Vampire Nation, 451 F.3d 189, 195 n.2 (3d Cir. 2006); see also Gunter, 462 F.3d at 247 n.10; King, 454 F.3d at 196 n.5. It would aid our review of criminal sentences if district courts and counsel employed this terminology as well. 3 Courts were expected “rarely” to give a Guidelines departure. See U.S.S.G. § 5K2.0, comment. And so it was. See United States Sentencing Commission, “Federal Sentencing Statistics by State, District & Court,” Fiscal Year 2003, at 11 (showing that non-Government-initiated downward departures were granted in only 7.5% of cases nationally and in 7.4% of c a s e s i n o u r C i r c u i t ) , a t http://www.ussc.gov/JUDPACK/2003/3c03.pdf. 9 the ground asserted, we had jurisdiction to review for legal error; if, instead, the judge recognized her/his authority to depart but chose not to do so, we lacked jurisdiction to review that decision. United States v. Denardi, 892 F.2d 269, 271–72 (3d Cir. 1989) (citing 18 U.S.C. § 3742); see also United States v. D’Angelico, 376 F.3d 141, 141 (3d Cir. 2004); United States v. Allen, 223 F.3d 239, 247 (3d Cir. 2000); United States v. Mummert, 34 F.3d 201, 205 (3d Cir. 1994). Not surprisingly, we needed district judges to “state expressly whether [their] denial of [a] defendant’s departure request was based on legal or discretionary grounds.” Mummert, 34 F.3d at 205; see D’Angelico, 376 F.3d at 141–42. If we were unable to discern the basis for a court’s denial of a departure motion, remand was the remedy. United States v. Evans, 49 F.3d 109, 112 (3d Cir. 1995); Mummert, 34 F.3d at 205. Again, our rule mandating an unambiguous record for rulings on departure motions derived from the need to determine whether we had jurisdiction to review a sentence within the Guidelines range. After Booker, however, we have jurisdiction to review all criminal sentences for reasonableness, even those that result from the exercise of a district court’s discretion to set a sentence within the Guidelines range. See Cooper, 437 F.3d at 326–28. Still, the clear intent of the remedial opinion in Booker was for the process of calculating the Guidelines to continue operating as before. See Booker, 543 U.S. at 258–62 (“The remainder of the [Sentencing Reform] Act functions independently.” (internal quotation marks omitted)); Gunter, 10 462 F.3d at 247 (“Courts must continue to calculate a defendant’s Guidelines sentence precisely as they would have before Booker. In doing so, they must formally rule on the [departure] motions of both parties . . . .” (citations and internal quotation marks omitted)).4 Not for jurisdictional reasons, but rather because the Guidelines still play an integral role in criminal sentencing, see 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(4); Booker, 543 U.S. at 258–65; Cooper, 437 F.3d at 330–31, we require that the entirety of the Guidelines calculation be done correctly, including rulings on Guidelines departures.5 Put another way, district courts must 4 This does not mean, of course, that nothing about the sentencing process has changed. The significance of Booker—what resuscitated the Guidelines from unconstitutionality—is that once the Guidelines range has been calculated, a sentencing court now has discretion to vary from that range. This critical aspect of Booker is embodied in step three of Gunter. See infra Part II.B. 5 For these reasons, we disagree with the Courts of Appeals for the Seventh and Ninth Circuits, which have ruled Guidelines departures obsolete in the wake of Booker. See United States v. Mohamed, 459 F.3d 979, 985–87 (9th Cir. 2006); United States v. Arnaout, 431 F.3d 994, 1003–04 (7th Cir. 2005). At least six other circuits essentially employ the same approach to departures as we do, and one other has fashioned a modified (but continuing) role for Guidelines departures. See 11 still calculate what the proper Guidelines sentencing range is, otherwise the Guidelines cannot be considered properly at Gunter’s third step. See 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(4); United States v. Zeigler, 463 F.3d 814, 819 (8th Cir. 2006) (Hansen, J., concurring) (“Generally, if the district court errs in applying the Guidelines at step one or fails to consider a requested departure at step two, we cannot conduct a reasonableness review because the district court’s critical starting point, a correctly determined advisory Guidelines range, may be flawed.”); Crawford, 407 F.3d at 1178–79; Hawk Wing, 433 F.3d at 631 (“When a court of appeals reviews a district court’s sentencing determination for reasonableness, the correct guidelines range is still the critical starting point for the imposition of a sentence.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). The scenario is simple: error entering this sentencing step may presage the sentence ultimately set. Pre-Booker law regarding Guidelines departures, United States v. Wallace, 461 F.3d 15, 32 (1st Cir. 2006) (citing United States v. Dixon, 449 F.3d 194, 203–04 (1st Cir. 2006)); United States v. McBride, 434 F.3d 470, 474–77 (6th Cir. 2006); United States v. Hawk Wing, 433 F.3d 622, 631 (8th Cir. 2006); United States v. Selioutsky, 409 F.3d 114, 118–19 (2d Cir. 2005); United States v. Crawford, 407 F.3d 1174, 1178 (11th Cir. 2005); United States v. Villegas, 404 F.3d 355, 361–62 (5th Cir. 2005); see also United States v. Moreland, 437 F.3d 424, 432–33 (4th Cir. 2006) (describing a process in which Guidelines departures are considered only after a district court determines that the initial Guidelines calculation does not serve the § 3553(a) factors). 12 therefore, necessarily informs the sentencing process—for district courts and for us. Gunter, 462 F.3d at 247; King, 454 F.3d at 196. Jackson argues that the District Court here erred by never ruling on his motion for a downward departure based on his “extraordinary acceptance of responsibility.” See U.S.S.G. § 5K2.0; Evans, 49 F.3d at 114–15; United States v. Lieberman, 971 F.2d 989, 994–96 (3d Cir. 1992). We agree that the record reveals no such ruling. Failure to rule on a Guidelines departure motion indeed would seem opposed to our pre-Booker precedent; moreover, it would seem contrary to step two in Gunter. Our pre-Booker jurisprudence, however, also provided that we would not remand for re-sentencing when the Government’s arguments to the district court “concede[d] the plausibility of the downward departure.” D’Angelico, 376 F.3d at 142. In those cases “it seem[ed] quite likely that the district court’s refusal to depart . . . was discretionary,” and thus we would infer that the departure motion had been denied by the court in recognition of its ability to depart had it chosen to do so. Mummert, 34 F.3d at 205; see D’Angelico, 376 F.3d at 142. This is still true post-Booker for purposes of Gunter’s second step. The Eighth and Eleventh Circuits (at least) have ruled that, as it was pre-Booker, courts of appeals still have no authority to review discretionary denials of departure motions in calculating sentencing ranges. See United States v. Morell, 429 13 F.3d 1161, 1164 (8th Cir. 2005) (“The decision not to depart is not reviewable under 18 U.S.C. § 3742.” (citing United States v. Frokjer, 415 F.3d 865, 875 (8th Cir. 2005), which observed that §§ 3742(a) and (b) were not disturbed by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Booker)); see also Crawford, 407 F.3d at 1178. We express no opinion on that specific question. But because it is our purpose to have Gunter’s first two steps track preBooker practice, we shall continue not to disturb a district court’s discretionary denial of a departure motion.6 6 This applies post-Booker only to the calculation of the Guidelines range at step two, however. The process is not complete there, as step three requires our review of the sentence against the several § 3553(a) factors, only one of which is the Guidelines range. See infra Part II.B. As for how we now review non-discretionary denials (i.e., where a sentencing court believes that the Guidelines do not contemplate a departure at step two) or grants of departure motions, the issue is not presented in this case. For completeness, though, we note that, pre-Booker, these district court decisions had always been subject to some form of review. See 18 U.S.C. § 3742(e) (providing for de novo review of Guidelines departures); Koon v. United States, 518 U.S. 81, 96–100 (1996) (providing for review of departures under an abuse of discretion standard, prior to the amendment of § 3742(e) in 2003). Given what we have said about the significance of a correct Guidelines calculation as a starting point in the determination of a criminal sentence, these determinations likely should continue to be reviewed so as to ensure the proper Guidelines range calculation. 14 In this case, the Government argued to the District Court as follows: I don’t know if the defendant is pushing for the extraordinary acceptance of responsibility. I didn’t hear any argument on that today. But we would oppose it, your Honor, because the cases that he cites do not rise -- are a much higher level of acceptance of responsibility than the defendant making an admission at the time of this arrest[, as in Jackson’s case]. We could, of course, eventually rule that some errors at this second step can be harmless, as the sentence imposed after a district court exercises its discretion in step three (regardless of its decision at step two) is subject to our reasonableness review. See, e.g., United States v. Robinson, 433 F.3d 31, 35 (1st Cir. 2005); United States v. Long Soldier, 431 F.3d 1120, 1122 (8th Cir. 2005); cf. Williams v. United States, 503 U.S. 193, 202 (1992) (holding, pre-Booker, that “once the court of appeals has decided that the district court misapplied the Guidelines, a remand is appropriate unless the reviewing court concludes, on the record as a whole, that the error was harmless, i.e., that the error did not affect the district court’s selection of the sentence imposed”). But see United States v. Hillyer, 457 F.3d 347, 351–53 (4th Cir. 2006) (remanding for resentencing without a harmless error analysis); United States v. Fuller, 426 F.3d 556, 562 (2d Cir. 2005) (rejecting harmless error review for erroneous grant of Guidelines departure). As noted above, this issue is not presented here; consequently, we do not decide it. 15 Though one might contend that the Government intended its argument to speak to the District Court’s legal ability to grant a Guidelines departure at step two, we think not. We believe rather that the Government was arguing that Jackson’s acceptance of responsibility was not extraordinary enough to deserve a departure. This was enough for the Judge to have recognized the possibility of a departure in calculating the Guidelines range on the basis of Jackson’s acceptance of responsibility. Cf. Mummert, 34 F.3d at 205 (“Since . . . the government apparently acknowledged at the time of sentencing[] that a downward departure for ‘diminished capacity’ is permissible under some circumstances, it seems quite likely that the district court’s refusal to depart on this ground was discretionary.”). Given the continued importance of a correct Guidelines calculation (including rulings on departure motions), it may be, as before Booker, that remand would have been appropriate here. Even post-Booker, having to infer the District Court’s thinking is “not our preferred course.” See id. (admonishing counsel to ensure that the record is not ambiguous in order to facilitate appellate review). Yet pre-Booker law regarding Guidelines departures enables us to infer meaning from the District Court’s actions in this circumstance. Consequently, there was no error at step two.