Opinion ID: 615762
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Approach of Our Sister Circuits

Text: McGee (and by extension our decision here) is in conflict with the decisions of several other circuits. For example, in Darton, the Tenth Circuit faced the same situation we faced in McGee a request for a sentence reduction by a career offender who had received a criminal history departure under § 4A1.3 to a sentence within the range produced by the offense guideline. Darton, 595 F.3d at 1193. The defendant argued that the initial sentence was based on the post-departure range, which was the applicable range under § 1B1.10, but his argument was rejected by the Tenth Circuit. The court's reasoning was driven by the Guidelines Manual's definition of the term departure. By specifically defining a departure as a sentence outside the applicable guideline range, the court reasoned, the Guidelines make clear that a departure only exists apart from the applicable guideline range; there is no such thing as a departure to the applicable range. Id. at 1194 (citing definitions of departure in the commentary to §§ 1B1.1, 4A1.3 and 5K2.0). Thus, it concluded that the guideline range to which a court departs cannot constitute the `applicable guideline range' or, in other words, the range upon which the sentence is `based' for purposes of a sentence reduction under § 3582(c). Id. Darton relied in part on the Eighth Circuit's decision in Tolliver, which reached a similar result in a different (and unusual) setting. In Tolliver, the parties engaged in plea bargaining based on the assumption that the crack guideline would yield a range of 188-235 months. Tolliver, 570 F.3d at 1064. However, the probation officer determined that the career offender guideline applied, the court agreed, and Tolliver was sentenced to a 262-month term. Id. Later, Tolliver and the government stipulated to a grant of § 2255 relief on the condition that Tolliver would then be sentenced to a 188-month term. Id. That sentence was imposed, and after the 2007 amendment to the crack sentences, Tolliver sought a reduction under § 3582(c)(2) and § 1B1.10. Id. In finding him ineligible, the Eighth Circuit relied not only on the Guidelines' definition of the term departure, but also on the application instructions for the Guidelines set forth in § 1B1.1. Id. at 1065-66. Those instructions require a sentencing judge to take all the steps necessary to compute the guidelines range before deciding whether any departures are warranted. It follows, the court observed, that ... the application instructions will only permit a departure from the `applicable guideline range,' and thus preclude a departure to the `applicable guideline range.' Id. at 1066 (emphases added). Therefore, it held, the career offender range was the defendant's applicable range, and since it had not been lowered by the 2007 amendment, Tolliver was ineligible for a sentence reduction. Id. at 1066-67. [11] The Sixth Circuit reached the same result in United States v. Pembrook, 609 F.3d 381 (6th Cir.2010), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 131 S.Ct. 1599, 179 L.Ed.2d 503 (2011). In holding that a sentenced defendant who was indistinguishable from the defendant in McGee was not eligible for a sentence reduction, the court found its most persuasive support in the Guidelines' application instructions relied upon by the court in Tolliver. Id. at 385. Since the order of operations established by those instructions makes it clear that departures occur only after the applicable guidelines range has been computed, the court reasoned that applicable range for purposes of § 1B1.10 must be the pre -departure range. Id. Like the Eighth and Tenth Circuits in Tolliver and Darton, respectively, the Sixth Circuit also found support for its holding in the Guidelines' definition of the term departure. Id. [12] Pembrook, Tolliver and Darton are all based on the same flawed premisethat the applicable range for the purpose of a sentencing proceeding must necessarily be the same as the applicable range for the purpose of a subsequent sentence modification. We see no reason why that must be the case. We acknowledge a natural presumption that identical words used in different parts of the same act are intended to have the same meaning, Atlantic Cleaners & Dyers, Inc. v. United States, 286 U.S. 427, 433, 52 S.Ct. 607, 76 L.Ed. 1204 (1932), and we agree that the same presumption would generally apply to identical phrases used in different parts of the Guidelines Manual. But the presumption is not rigid and readily yields whenever there is such variation in the connection in which the words are used as reasonably to warrant the conclusion that they were employed in different parts of the act with different intent. Id.; see also Helvering v. Stockholms Enskilda Bank, 293 U.S. 84, 87, 55 S.Ct. 50, 79 L.Ed. 211 (1934) ([S]ince most words admit of different shades of meaning, susceptible of being expanded or abridged to conform to the sense in which they are used, the presumption readily yields to the controlling force of the circumstance that the words, though in the same act, are found in such dissimilar connections as to warrant the conclusion that they were employed in the different parts of the act with different intent.). One circumstance in which the presumption is readily rebutted is [w]here the subject matter to which the words refer is not the same in the several places where they are used, Atlantic Cleaners & Dyers, 286 U.S. at 433, 52 S.Ct. 607, and that is precisely the situation here. The subject matter of the phrase applicable guideline range in the definition of departure in the commentary to § 1B1.1 is the defendant's sentencing, at which time the applicable range is the starting point and the initial benchmark of the proceeding. Gall, 552 U.S. at 49, 128 S.Ct. 586. Because the Guidelines themselves contemplate departures from the applicable range (and Booker contemplates variances from it even where departures are unavailable), the starting point is not always the finishing point. Thus, it is true that when Rivera was sentenced, his applicable range was the career offender range of 360 months to life. From there, the sentencing judge departed based on his mental condition to a different range, 292-365 months. The subject matter of the phrase guideline range applicable to the defendant in § 1B1.10 is not a sentencing proceeding but a modification proceeding that occurs after (in this case, more than 10 years after) sentence has been imposed. The question in that context is not what sentence is appropriate, but rather whether the sentence actually imposed should be reduced in light of an intervening retroactive amendment. In that setting, common sense suggests that in deciding whether the guideline range applicable to the defendant has subsequently lowered, a court should focus on the range that was actually applied by the sentencing judge to the defendant, even if, as in this case, that range differs from the one that was the starting point of initial sentencing proceeding. Now that Rivera seeks a modification of his sentence, the 292-365 month range to which his sentencing judge departed is his applicable range. In concluding otherwise, we respectfully suggest that our sister circuits have simply misemploy[ed] the `presumption that identical words used in different parts of the same act are intended to have the same meaning.' Gen. Dynamics Land Sys., Inc. v. Cline, 540 U.S. 581, 595, 124 S.Ct. 1236, 157 L.Ed.2d 1094 (2004) (quoting Atlantic Cleaners & Dyers, 286 U.S. at 433, 52 S.Ct. 607). Our conclusion that the applicable range may have one meaning for sentencing purposes and another for purposes of a § 3582(c)(2) proceeding finds support in our rationale in Martinez. The defendant there sought a modification under § 3582(c)(2) and contended that his initial sentence was based on the offense guideline because the sentencing judge consulted that guideline in calculating his range as a career offender. We disagreed, holding that his applicable range for purposes of § 3582(c) was the end result of the overall guideline range calculus i.e., the career offender range, not the interim steps along the way. Martinez, 572 F.3d at 85. We explained that the term `sentencing range' clearly contemplates the end result of the overall guideline calculus, not the series of tentative results reached at various interim steps in the performance of that calculus. ... Therefore to determine which Guideline a defendant's sentence is based on we look only to the end result of the overall calculus ... and not to the interim steps taken by the District Court. Id. at 84 n. 3 (quoting United States v. Mateo, 560 F.3d 152, 155 (3d Cir.2009)) (emphasis added); see also United States v. Caraballo, 552 F.3d 6, 10 (1st Cir.2008). When Rivera was sentenced, the offense guideline and the career offender guideline were both interim steps in the sentencing calculus, the end result of which was the lower range to which the sentencing judge departed. Thus, the applicable range at Rivera's sentencing was the career offender range, but the applicable range for his 3582(c)(2) proceeding is the range on which the sentencing judge actually based his sentence. Our approach is also consistent with the Supreme Court's emphasis in Dillon on the fact that a § 3582(c)(2) proceeding is not a resentencing. It is, rather, a limited revisiting of a previously-imposed sentence, during which the analytic framework of the sentence is replicated with one exceptionthe provision that has been retroactively amended is substituted for the corresponding provision applied at the time of sentencing. See Dillon, 130 S.Ct. at 2691 (citing § 1B1.10(b)(1)). By its very nature, then, the focus of the modification proceeding is on the final result of the sentencing proceeding, and the analysis that led to that result. Where the final result is the same as the initial applicable range, as in Martinez, the applicable guideline at both the sentencing and the subsequent modification proceeding are the same. But where, as here, the analytic framework of the sentence includes a determination that the defendant falls outside the heartland of the applicable range that was the starting point of the sentencing proceeding, the applicable range at the modification stage will be different. We think Pembrook, Tolliver and Darton strain to avoid the commonsense conclusion that the guideline range applicable to the defendant within the meaning of § 1B1.10 is the range that was actually used in sentencing the defendant. In Pembrook, for example, the defendant was actually sentenced within the range produced by the drug offense guideline, which the district court used after departing under § 4A1.3 from the range prescribed by the career offender guideline. Pembrook, 609 F.3d at 383-84. But the Sixth Circuit nonetheless held that the applicable range was the career offender range the sentencing court had found inapplicable because it overrepresented the seriousness of the defendant's criminal past. Id. Though we disagree with the details of the court's analysis, [13] the more important point is the one we made in McGee and reiterate here: the combination of the rule of lenity and the fact that the crack amendments were adopted and made retroactive to ameliorate past sentences that were both fundamentally unfair and racially discriminatory counsels against the government's crabbed construction of § 3582(c)(2) and § 1B1.10. [14] We are aware that other courts have found crack offenders ineligible for § 3582(c)(2) reductions in sentence despite the fact that they received Chapter Five-based departures from their career offender ranges, as Rivera did in this case. See United States v. Wesson, 583 F.3d 728, 730-32 (9th Cir.2009) (despite departure grounded on diminished capacity, initial sentence based on career offender guideline), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 130 S.Ct. 2071, 176 L.Ed.2d 421 (2010); Caraballo, 552 F.3d at 8, 11-12 (same; departure grounded on medical condition). While there are elements of those courts' analyses that conflict with our analysis here, a critical distinction eliminates the need for extended discussion of them. Specifically, there was no indication in either case that the retroactive amendment would alter the outcome of the career offender guideline computation, as it does for Rivera (by lowering his offense level from 38 to 37). Thus, even if those defendants' sentences were found to be based on the post -departure range in their cases, it could not be said that that range was lowered by the 2007 amendment. The case before us involves a defendant whose career offender computation is indeed altered by the amendment in question, as well as a sentencing methodology that strongly suggests the alteration would have made a difference to the sentencing judge. We need not address here situations in which one of those factors is missing. Finally, we acknowledge the Sentencing Commission's proposed amendment to § 1B1.10, see U.S. Sentencing Comm'n, 76 Fed.Reg. 41332 (proposed July 13, 2011). Absent congressional disapproval, that amendment will become effective on November 1, 2011, and it will dramatically alter the landscape for sentenced prisoners who seek to benefit from this year's retroactive reduction of crack sentences. Among other effects, the proposed amendment will preclude sentence modifications in situations like the one in McGee, [15] where we found them permissible, and at least arguably permit them in situations like the one in Williams, see supra n. 8, [16] where we found them to be precluded. Indeed, because the amendment will prescribe the precise construction of applicable guideline range that we refuse to give the existing guideline, i.e., it is the pre-departure range from the initial sentencing, the proposed amendment would render Rivera himself ineligible for a sentence reduction if it were applied to his case. However, because the amendments to § 1B1.10, which abrogate the law of this and certain other circuits, are substantive, rather than merely clarifying, see United States v. Sabbeth, 277 F.3d 94, 99 (2d Cir.2002), they cannot fairly be applied retroactively to Rivera's § 3582(c)(2) proceeding on remand.