Opinion ID: 5648544
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Information Considered

Text: “[S]entencing judges exercise a wide discretion in the types of evidence they may consider when imposing sentence . . . .” Pepper v. United States, 562 U.S. 476, 480 (2011) (quotation omitted). “[A]s a general proposition, a sentencing judge may appropriately conduct an inquiry broad in scope, largely unlimited either as to the kind of information he may consider, or the source from which it may come.” Witte v. United States, 515 U.S. 389, 398 (1995) (quotations omitted). Nonetheless, “there are constitutional limitations on the generally broad scope of information a court may consider at sentencing.” United States v. Nichols, 438 F.3d 437, 440 (4th Cir. 2006) (quotation, brackets, and ellipsis omitted). For example, in United States v. Tucker, 404 U.S. 443, 447-49 (1972), the Supreme Court ruled that a sentencing judge may not consider “a defendant’s prior felony convictions that had been obtained without affording [him] the right to counsel,” Nichols, 438 F.3d at 440. The defendant argues that: (1) under Lafler and Fitzgerald, a “resentencing court should consider only that information that ordinarily would have been discovered between the acceptance of the plea offer and sentencing”; (2) here, the trial court must have considered other information; and (3) its doing so violated his federal and state constitutional rights to due process. In so arguing, he relies upon the following language from Lafler, which we partially quoted in Fitzgerald: Principles elaborated over time in decisions of state and federal courts, and in statutes and rules, will serve to give more complete guidance as to the factors that should bear upon the exercise of the judge’s discretion. At this point, however, it suffices to note two considerations that are of relevance. First, a court may take account of a defendant’s earlier expressed willingness, or unwillingness, to accept responsibility for his or her actions. Second, it is not necessary here to decide as a constitutional rule that a judge is required to prescind (that is to say disregard) any information concerning the crime that was discovered after the plea offer was made. The time continuum makes it difficult to restore the defendant and the prosecution to the precise positions they occupied prior to the rejection of the plea offer, but that baseline can be consulted in finding a remedy that does not require the prosecution to incur the expense of conducting a new trial. Lafler, 566 U.S. at 171-72; see Fitzgerald, 173 N.H. at 582. The defendant’s interpretation of Lafler and Fitzgerald is mistaken. Nothing in the quoted text limits a resentencing court to the “two 6 considerations . . . of relevance” described by the Court. Lafler, 566 U.S. at 171. The first consideration is permissive — allowing trial courts to “take account of a defendant’s earlier expressed willingness, or unwillingness, to accept responsibility” for his actions. Id. The second consideration is also permissive — allowing a trial court to consider “information concerning the crime that was discovered after the plea offer was made.” Id. at 171-72. To the extent that the defendant asserts that Lafler prohibited the trial court from considering his trial testimony, he is again mistaken. “Lafler clearly indicates that the [resentencing] court need not disregard what occurred at trial when attempting to neutralize the taint of ineffective assistance of counsel.” United States v. Cobb, 695 F. App’x 650, 653 (3d Cir. 2017). None of the cases from other jurisdictions upon which the defendant relies support his assertions that Lafler limited the information that the resentencing court could consider or precluded the resentencing court from considering a defendant’s trial testimony. Having rejected the premise of the defendant’s argument as to Lafler and Fitzgerald, we necessarily reject the argument itself. The defendant also analogizes this case to Abram. The issue in that case was whether the sentence the defendant received on remand after a partially successful appeal was “effectively more severe than the first [sentence he received], and, thus, [was] presumptively vindictive.” Abram, 156 N.H. at 651. We explained that “when a defendant receives a more severe sentence from the same sentencing judge on retrial after appeal, judicial vindictiveness is presumed unless the judge states the reasons for the increased sentence on the record, and those reasons are based on objective information concerning identifiable conduct on the part of the defendant occurring after the time of the original sentencing procedure.” Id. at 652 (quotation, brackets, and emphasis omitted). The defendant in the instant case argues that just as we “limited the information upon which the trial court could rely when resentencing a defendant to a harsher sentence after a successful appeal” so as “to remedy the harm of a presumptively vindictive sentence,” so too should we limit “the information properly available for the trial court’s consideration” in an appeal like his appeal. We decline the defendant’s invitation to extend Abram to this case.