Opinion ID: 169936
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Abuse-of-Discretion Review Under the Reasonableness Standard

Text: At one point in its opinion, the Supreme Court stated that appellate `reasonableness' review merely asks whether the trial court abused its discretion. Rita, 127 S.Ct. at 2465. [5] This appears to be a new formulation; the term abuse of discretion did not appear in the Booker opinion. Justice Stevens' concurrence suggests that the essence of Booker was to repudiate the de novo standard of review imposed by Congress as part of the PROTECT Act, Pub.L. No. 108-21, § 401(d)(2), 117 Stat. 650, 670 (2003), and to restore the abuse of discretion standard applied to departures from the Sentencing Guidelines under Koon v. United States, 518 U.S. 81, 116 S.Ct. 2035, 135 L.Ed.2d 392 (1996). See Rita, 127 S.Ct. at 2470-71 (Stevens, J., concurring). It is not clear from the Rita opinion whether the Court regarded its use of the abuse of discretion standard as meaningfully different from the prior language of reasonableness. The new term appears in a single sentence in the opinion, and the context does not contain any indication that the Court was announcing a change. The idea of abuse of discretion is common in appellate practice, and covers a wide range of meanings. As Judge Friendly once observed, There are a half dozen different definitions of `abuse of discretion,' ranging from ones that would require the appellate court to come close to finding that the trial court had taken leave of its senses to others which differ from the definition of error by only the slightest nuance, with numerous variations between the extremes. Henry J. Friendly, Indiscretion About Discretion, 31 Emory L.J. 747, 763 (1982). All we can say with confidence is that the term is indicative of deferential review. See Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corp., 496 U.S. 384, 399-405, 110 S.Ct. 2447, 110 L.Ed.2d 359 (1990). But deference does not imply abdication. Id. at 402, 405, 110 S.Ct. 2447. The Rita majority stressed that appellate review is not intended to be a rubber stamp: In sentencing, as in other areas, district judges at times make mistakes that are substantive. At times, they will impose sentences that are unreasonable. Circuit courts exist to correct such mistakes when they occur. Rita, 127 S.Ct. at 2466. We therefore do not believe that the Supreme Court's adoption of abuse of discretion nomenclature requires a change in this Circuit's approach. We have always regarded appellate review of sentencing decisions as deferential. Kristl, 437 F.3d at 1054. Indeed, a review of our cases makes apparent that reasonableness review has functionedin practice if not in nameas review for abuse of discretion. In United States v. Rodriguez-Quintanilla, 442 F.3d 1254, 1256-57 (10th Cir.2006), we noted that abuse of discretion, as employed in some of our pre- Booker cases, is so similar to reasonableness review that analysis under the two is often functionally equivalent. Although, prior to Rita, we were chary of formally equating the two standards, see, e.g., United States v. Cordova, 461 F.3d 1184, 1188 (10th Cir.2006), we noted in Rodriguez-Quintanilla a tendency to use the terms interchangeably, 442 F.3d at 1258. See also, e.g., United States v. Sanchez-Juarez, 446 F.3d 1109, 1117 (10th Cir.2006) ([T]he fact that there is inevitably a range of sentences that could be held reasonable means that our affirmance of a sentence will necessarily defer, in effect, to the district court's exercise of discretion in choosing a particular sentence within that range.); United States v. Contreras-Martinez, 409 F.3d 1236, 1241 (10th Cir.2005) (upholding a sentence as reasonable by stating that the district court was exercising its discretion and was well within its discretion). We therefore conclude that, with respect to within-Guidelines sentences, Rita does nothing to change the appellate reasonableness standard this Circuit has applied since Booker.  Garcia-Lara, 499 F.3d at 1135.