Opinion ID: 2708559
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Felipe Zamora

Text: Because he pleaded guilty, Zamora’s appeal also is restricted to his sentence. We look first to ensure that the sentence is free from procedural error and, if it is, we then ask Nos. 11-3179 et al. 39 whether it is substantively reasonable. United States v. Annoreno, 713 F.3d 352, 356–57 (7th Cir. 2013). A district court must begin the sentencing proceeding “by correctly calculating the applicable Guidelines range.” Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 49 (2007). Once it has done so, it must then “consider all of the § 3553(a) factors to determine whether they support the sentence requested by a party.” Id. at 49–50. If the court decides to impose a sentence outside the guidelines range, it is free to do so, but it “must consider the extent of the deviation and ensure that the justification is sufficiently compelling to support the degree of the variance.” Id. at 50; see also United States v. Cunningham, 429 F.3d 673, 675–76 (7th Cir. 2005) (emphasizing need to explain choice of sentence even within guidelines range). At sentencing, Zamora admitted the factual conclusions of the Presentence Report (PSR) and withdrew his objections to the report. He asked for an offense-level reduction based on acceptance of responsibility, see U.S.S.G. § 3E1.1, and he proposed a guidelines range of 168–210 months. The government opposed the acceptance adjustment and argued for a range of 235–293 months, with the actual sentence to be capped at the 240-month statutory maximum. The district court granted Zamora’s acceptance of responsibility request, but it sentenced him to concurrent sentences of 240 months per count. This is a confusing outcome, at best. The court made no mention of its final calculated guidelines range, even though that is a critical step in sentencing. See United States v. Robinson, 435 F.3d 699, 700–01 (7th Cir. 2006). The government suggests that the court probably adopted Zamora’s recommendation of 168–210 months, because it granted his request 40 Nos. 11-3179 et al. for acceptance of responsibility. The judgment order partially reflects this, insofar as it records an offense level of 33 and a criminal history of III—a combination that leads to a range of 168–210 months. But the judgment reports a different final range: 168–235 months. There is no such range in the sentencing guidelines, and so this must be an error. For criminal history III, this range looks like a blend of offense levels 33 and 34, but the court never explained it that way, nor did the court justify its deviation from the guidelines, as required by Gall. The court did, however, move on to Gall’s second step and considered the § 3553(a) factors. It commented on the “nature and circumstances of this offense” and Zamora’s “history and [his] characteristics as a defendant.” It also briefly mentioned the seriousness of the offense, the need for deterrence, and the need to protect the public. Other than listing these factors, the court said nothing about why they were served (or not served) by the sentence it chose. It also did not explain why it picked a sentence 30 months above the top of the guidelines range, assuming that the court meant to start with the 168–210 month guidelines calculation. (In fact, the sentence was also above the range that the court recorded, but only by five months.) Either way, there was no explanation for this choice. With the record in this condition, we conclude that we must vacate Zamora’s sentence and send it back to the district court for re-calculation. Gall does not permit a district court to skip the process of ascertaining the recommended guidelines range. Here, we do not have that critical piece of data. We also have no explanation from the district court of how much time above the range it thought was proper, and Nos. 11-3179 et al. 41 why. We cannot ignore these procedural problems and jump right to the substantive reasonableness of the sentence. See Peugh v. United States, 133 S. Ct. 2072, 2080 (2013) (reviewing the procedures that the district court must follow). Our review of the reasonableness of a sentence is deferential, but in this instance we do not have enough information from the district court to be confident that its choice was made based on accurate information. We thus have nothing to which we can defer. Zamora’s other attack on his sentence does not persuade us, but we do not need to say much about it given our decision to remand for resentencing. He asserts that his sentence is substantively unreasonable because it differs from sentences imposed on several of his co-defendants. All we will say is that § 3553(a)(6) forbids only unwarranted disparities. There are many differences between Zamora and his codefendants, and so there is no reason to expect identical sentences for them. We are confident that the district court will keep this in mind as it conducts the proceedings on remand.