Opinion ID: 151874
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Adequacy of the Sentence Findings and Explanation

Text: Judge Tjoflat's separate opinion criticizes the district court for not making more detailed sentence findings and not offering a better explanation for the sentence it imposed. Separate Op. of Tjoflat, J., at 1251, 1257-58 Irey's sentence, according to that separate opinion, is unreasonable because the district court failed to make intelligible and specific findings on the § 3553(a)(2)(A) factors, and because it did not explicitly weigh those factors. Id. at 1257-58. About that criticism, we have four things to say. First of all, the adequacy of a district court's findings and sentence explanation is a classic procedural issue, not a substantive one. See Gall, 552 U.S. at 51, 128 S.Ct. at 597 (explaining that failing to consider the § 3553(a) factors,... or failing to adequately explain the chosen sentence, constitutes procedural error); United States v. Ellisor, 522 F.3d 1255, 1273 (11th Cir.2008) (Tjoflat, J.). And in this case no one has ever argued that the district court committed any procedural error in sentencing. That possibility was not mentioned by either party in the district court, or in their briefs to the panel, or in the oral argument before the panel, or in the panel's opinion (which Judge Tjoflat joined), or in the en banc briefing instructions, or by the parties in their briefs to us, or at oral argument before us, or anywhere else at all until it emerged in Judge Tjoflat's separate opinion. The issue in this appeal has never been procedural reasonableness, but instead substantive reasonableness. Judge Tjoflat's opinion, although purporting to recognize that Irey's sentence cannot be vacated on procedural grounds, dresses up its own procedural objections to the sentence as substantive ones. No amount of rhetorical couture, however, can cover up the fact that the opinion really is complaining about the procedural unreasonableness of the sentence, an issue that is not before us. Second, even if that issue were before us, the district court was not required to make any more detailed findings or give a more thorough explanation than it did. In Rita the Supreme Court upheld the adequacy of a sentencing judge's statement of reasons [which] was brief but legally sufficient. 551 U.S. at 358, 127 S.Ct. at 2469. It did so because the record showed that the judge listened to the evidence and arguments and was aware of the various factors the defendant put forward for a lesser sentence. Id. In sentencing the defendant the judge did not say much, and the Court acknowledged that he might have said more, but it surmised that [h]e must have believed that there was not much more to say. Id. Although the judge did not even state that he had considered the evidence and argument or why he rejected the arguments for a variance, it was enough that the context and record indicated the reasoning behind his conclusion. Id. at 359, 127 S.Ct. at 2469. No member of this Court has ever before indicated that a sentencing judge is required to articulate his findings and reasoning with great detail or in any detail for that matter. See, e.g., United States v. Sanchez, 586 F.3d 918, 935-36 (11th Cir. 2009) (Tjoflat, J.) (In general, the district court is not required to state on the record that it has explicitly considered each of the § 3553(a) factors or to discuss each of the § 3553(a) factors. It is sufficient that the district court considers the defendant's arguments at sentencing and states that it has taken the § 3553(a) factors into account. (citation and quotation marks omitted)); United States v. Brown, 526 F.3d 691, 713 (11th Cir.2008); Ellisor, 522 F.3d at 1278. Judge Tjoflat's separate opinion now asserts, however, that he would have this Court sitting en banc overturn our precedent on the amount of specificity required of a sentencing judge. Separate Op. of Tjoflat, J., at 1245 n. 56. While we as an en banc court can overturn our own precedent, see, e.g., Main Drug, Inc. v. Aetna U.S. Healthcare, Inc., 475 F.3d 1228, 1230 (11th Cir.2007), we cannot overturn Supreme Court precedent. And the Supreme Court has already laid out the requirements for a sentencing court's recitation of its reasoning on each of the § 3553(a) factors: [W]e cannot read the statute (or our precedent) as insisting upon a full opinion in every case. The appropriateness of brevity or length, conciseness or detail, when to write, what to say, depends upon circumstances. Sometimes a judicial opinion responds to every argument; sometimes it does not; sometimes a judge simply writes the word granted, or denied on the face of a motion while relying upon context and the parties' prior arguments to make the reasons clear. The law leaves much, in this respect, to the judge's own professional judgment. Rita, 551 U.S. at 356, 127 S.Ct. at 2468. The depth of detail that Judge Tjoflat's separate opinion would require exceeds the requirements of that precedent. See id. ; see also id. at 359, 127 S.Ct. at 2469 (Where a matter is as conceptually simple as in the case at hand and the record makes clear that the sentencing judge considered the evidence and arguments, we do not believe the law requires the judge to write more extensively.). Third, the district court's sentence findings and explanation, which we have set out in full, see supra at 1177-80, are far more specific and detailed than we have seen in the vast majority of other cases where we have reviewed the substantive reasonableness of sentences. In fact, we cannot recall seeing sentence findings and explanations that were more specific and detailed than those in this case, although the substantive reasonableness of the sentence is another matter. We have never required or expected district judges to compose a doctoral thesis to explain why they have imposed a particular sentence. Fourth, the problem with the district court's sentence findings and explanation is not that they are unintelligible or lacking in specificity or effort; instead, the problem is that the sentence is substantively unreasonable. That unreasonableness is the underlying cause for the Tjoflat opinion's criticism of the findings and explanation as not intelligible, for its pronouncement that they cannot be reconciled with the sentence, and for its conclusion that in light of them the sentence is inconceivable. Separate Op. of Tjoflat, J., at 1256-57. The reason that the sentence when viewed against the findings is inconceivable, irreconcilable, and unintelligible is not the fault of the findings but of the sentence itself. The Tjoflat opinion confuses the unreasonableness of the sentence with an absence of stated reasons for it, and the impossibility of giving a reasoned basis for the sentence with a lack of effort on the part of the sentencing judge to do so. We turn now to the task of explaining why, even under the deferential standard of review that applies, viewing the facts and circumstances of this case in light of the § 3553(a) factors leads to the conclusion that the downward deviation sentence the district court imposed in this case is substantively unreasonable.