Opinion ID: 167825
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Booker Argument

Text: 10 Mr. Bustamante contends that the district court violated Booker by relying on facts not found by a jury to enhance his sentence in violation of the Sixth Amendment. He does not dispute that the district court recognized that, after Booker, the Guidelines were advisory, not mandatory. The government responds that our precedent clearly forecloses Mr. Bustamante's argument, citing United States v. Magallanez, 408 F.3d 672 (10th Cir.2005) and United States v. Lawrence, 405 F.3d 888 (10th Cir.2005). We review de novo a claim that the district court's sentence violated the Sixth Amendment. United States v. Dowell, 430 F.3d 1100, 1109 (10th Cir.2005). 11 We agree with the government that our circuit has already examined, and rejected, Mr. Bustamante's argument. See United States v. Dalton, 409 F.3d 1247, 1252 (10th Cir.2005) ( Booker therefore does not render judicial fact-finding by a preponderance of the evidence per se unconstitutional. The remedial portion of Booker demonstrates that such fact-finding is unconstitutional only when it operates to increase a defendant's sentence mandatorily. ); Magallanez, 408 F.3d at 685 ([T]he Supreme Court's holding in Booker would not have prohibited the district court from making the same factual findings and applying the same enhancements and adjustments to [the defendant's] sentence as long as it did not apply the Guidelines in a mandatory fashion.) (quoting Lawrence, 405 F.3d at 890). 12 Mr. Bustamante contends that these cases are distinguishable because they reviewed the defendants' arguments using a plain error standard of review, but this distinction makes no difference: these cases unequivocally establish that, so long as the district court applies the Guidelines in an advisory, rather than a mandatory, fashion, it may rely on facts found by a judge to be true based on a preponderance of the evidence.