Opinion ID: 3031993
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Abdication of Our Appellate Review Function

Text: Although the majority labels its approach a “limited remand,” the approach is in fact an abdication of our appellate review function. “We have used the term ‘limited remand’ to describe a remand to the district court for proceedings prior to this court’s consideration of the merits of an appeal.” United States v. Washington, 172 F.3d 1116, 1118 (9th Cir. 1999) (emphasis added). Under the majority’s approach, the district court conducts the third and fourth prongs of plain error review, resentences if it deems necessary, and reenters judgment. If a notice of appeal is filed, that judgment may become the subject of a new appeal, but our consideration of the merits of the defendant’s original appeal is eliminated. Contrary to the majority’s asserted reason for the remand— “to permit the sentencing judge to inform the reviewing court’s analysis” of the third prong of plain error review, ante at 6360—the sentencing judge is under no obligation to actu- ally inform us as to whether he “would have imposed a materially different sentence had he been aware of the nowadvisory nature of the sentencing guidelines.” Ante at 6360. Nor do we retain jurisdiction of the case. As a result, we will never make an informed appellate decision as to whether the Booker error affected the defendant’s original sentencing proceeding, and the fourth, discretionary, decision with which we are charged under plain error review simply vanishes. Therefore, despite its best effort to make it appear otherwise, the 6378 UNITED STATES v. AMELINE majority is simply relinquishing to the district courts the last two prongs of plain error review. As part of its efforts to justify its abdication of our appellate review function, the majority discusses at length several ways in which district judges create “potentially misleading records.” Whether or not district judges create “potentially misleading records,” it is a fact of life that appellate courts must review cold records; that’s their job and the argument is no justification for abandoning that important work. This argument also conflicts with the majority’s description of “The Process to be Followed,” which requires that a threejudge panel review the entire “potentially misleading” record before ordering a “limited remand.” Only “[i]f that analysis leads to the same dead end that [the majority] reach[es] here, where it is not possible to reliably determine from the record whether the sentence imposed would have been materially different” under the now-advisory Guidelines, ante at 6369, may the panel issue a “limited remand.” The majority never describes at what point a panel may reach a “dead end,” or when it will be impossible for a panel “to reliably determine” “whether the sentence imposed would have been materially different” under the now-advisory Guidelines. Ante at 6369. Unbelievably, the majority, acting in haste to dispose of unpreserved claims of Booker error, has left wide open the nature and extent of review in which any subsequent panel should engage before ordering a “limited remand.”2 2 Under the majority’s analysis, panels of our court remain free to review the record, apply the proper prejudice inquiry, find that prejudice exists, and remand for resentencing. The majority emphasizes that “the limited remand is invoked only when it cannot be determined from the record whether the judge would have imposed a materially different sentence had he known that the Guidelines are advisory rather than mandatory.” Ante at 6366. The majority continues, stating that “[o]nly after determining that the record did not sufficiently inform the reviewing court’s analysis,” is the “limited remand” triggered. Ante at 6367. This appears to leave open the process utilized by the Eleventh Circuit in United States v. Rodriguez, 398 F.3d 1291, 1301 (11th Cir. 2005), where if the district judge openly indicated that he would not have imposed the sentence he did but for the mandatory Guidelines, then prejudice is found. UNITED STATES v. AMELINE 6379 The majority also ignores our precedents that demonstrate that the limited remand device is used not to assign our traditional review function to the district court, but to elicit the district court’s decision on a question it earlier missed, or to permit the district court to engage in its own traditional factfinding function. In United States v. Gunning, 339 F.3d 948 (9th Cir. 2003) (per curiam), cited by the majority, Gunning argued that he was entitled to a two-level minor role adjustment under U.S.S.G. § 3B1.2(b). The district court made no findings regarding the adjustment. “Because it is for the district court to rule on sentencing issues in the first instance,” we remanded for the court to make additional findings and to resentence if necessary. Id. at 949. We did not remand to the district court to allow it to determine whether it had committed a legal error in sentencing in the first place. Therefore, the majority’s reliance on Gunning in support of its novel approach to plain error review is inapposite. Similarly, in United States v. Hovsepian, 359 F.3d 1144 (9th Cir. 2004), we held that because the district court did not consider appellees’ convictions or their possible affiliations with terrorist groups, the court failed to undertake a complete analysis of their naturalization applications. Id. at 1168. We remanded the case to the district court for additional factfinding—a task well within the traditional province of district courts, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 52(a)—not for a determination of whether the district court committed legal error. Id. at 1169. To the contrary: We not only retained jurisdiction over the appeal, we further ordered: Within 120 days of the issuance of the mandate, or such further time as this court may allow, the district court shall forward its additional findings of fact and conclusions of law to this court, with copies to the parties, so that we may review the district court’s assessment of all the relevant facts in reaching a final disposition. Within 30 days after the district court forwards its findings and conclusions, any 6380 UNITED STATES v. AMELINE party may request this court’s further review of the naturalization issue. Id. (first emphasis added). The majority cites no Supreme Court authority to support its delegation of the last two prongs of plain error review to the discretion of the district courts. Nor can it, because review for error, plain or otherwise, is an exclusive function of appellate courts. Booker itself makes this clear, as do a host of other Supreme Court decisions. See United States v. Dominguez Benitez, 124 S. Ct. 2333, 2340 (2004) (a defendant who seeks reversal on the ground that the district court committed plain error must satisfy the judgment of the “reviewing court” that the probability of a different result is sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome of the proceeding); United States v. Vonn, 535 U.S. 55, 59 (2002) (a “reviewing court” must consider the effect of any error on substantial rights); Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 763-64 (1946) (in deciding the prejudice prong of plain error, “appellate courts” must consider what effect the error had or reasonably may have had upon the outcome of the proceedings). As the Eleventh Circuit has recognized, “[t]he determination of plain error is the duty of courts of appeal, not district courts.” Rodriguez, 398 F.3d at 1305; see also United States v. Mares, 402 F.3d 511, 522 (5th Cir. 2005) (“[W]e find no support for [the Crosby approach] in the Supreme Court plain error cases. Those cases place the obligation on the appellate courts— rather than the district courts—to determine the third prong of the plain error test.”). The majority’s misreading of 18 U.S.C. § 3742(f) leads it to adopt the Second Circuit’s erroneous rationale that “the power to remand for resentencing [under § 3742(f)] necessarily encompasses the lesser power to order a limited remand.” Section 3742 governs appellate review of criminal sentences. As Justice Scalia noted in Booker: “Even the most casual reading of this section discloses that its purpose—its only UNITED STATES v. AMELINE 6381 purpose—is to enable courts of appeals to enforce conformity with the Guidelines.” Booker, 125 S. Ct. at 791 (Scalia, J., dissenting).3 Thus, § 3742 imposes an obligation on appellate courts to review district courts’ sentencing decisions. The majority misuses § 3742 by drawing an inference from that section, which was designed to curtail district courts’ discretion,4 to support relinquishing to district courts our appellate review function. The plain language of § 3742 demonstrates that it cannot carry the weight the majority assigns to it. Section 3742(f) provides, in pertinent part: 3 The continued viability of § 3742(f) itself is subject to question. As Justice Scalia wrote in Booker: If the Guidelines are no longer binding, one would think that the provision designed to ensure compliance with them would, in its totality, be inoperative. The Court holds otherwise. Like a blackrobed Alexander cutting the Gordian knot, it simply severs the purpose of the review provisions from their text, holding that only subsection (e), which sets forth the determinations that the court of appeals must make, is inoperative, whereas all the rest of § 3742 subsists—including, mirabile dictu, subsection (f), entitled “Decision and disposition,” which tracks the determinations required by the severed subsection (e) and specifies what disposition each of those determinations is to produce. This is rather like deleting the ingredients portion of a recipe and telling the cook to proceed with the preparation portion. Id. 4 To further constrain the exercise of discretion by district courts, appellate review of district courts’ sentencing decisions was broadened by the Prosecutorial Remedies and Tools Against the Exploitation of Children Today Act of 2003 (“PROTECT Act”), Pub. L. No. 108-21, 117 Stat. 650 (2003). See Booker, 125 S. Ct. at 786-87 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (“Congress has rejected each and every attempt to . . . vest judges with more sentencing options. . . . Most recently, Congress’ passage of the [PROTECT Act] reinforced the mandatory nature of the Guidelines by expanding de novo review of sentences to include all departures from the Guidelines . . . .”). 6382 UNITED STATES v. AMELINE If the court of appeals determines that—
imposed as a result of an incorrect application of the sentencing guidelines, the court shall remand the case for further sentencing proceedings with such instructions as the court considers appropriate. 18 U.S.C. § 3742(f)(1). This section mandates that “the court of appeals” make the determination that the sentence “was imposed in violation of the law.” Id. The majority instead invites the district courts—the very courts whose decisions are under review—to participate in the predicate finding of legal error. Sending the third and fourth prongs of the plain error determination to the district court abrogates the very obligation of appellate review that § 3742(f) mandates. Ordering a “limited remand” is not a lesser power inherent in § 3742(f); it is an entirely different remedy that conflicts with congressional directives as to the review and disposition of sentencing appeals. The Eleventh Circuit has also found illogic in the Second Circuit’s—and now our own—reasoning that, because § 3742(f) authorizes remands for resentencing to remedy a sentence imposed in error, appellate courts necessarily have the “lesser” power to remand for a determination of whether the original sentence was contrary to law: That conclusion does not follow at all. In cases of non-preserved error appellate courts lack the authority to remand for resentencing where the require- ments of the plain error rule have not been met. The remands being ordered are not, as Crosby suggests, for the purpose of determining “whether to resen- tence,” but for the purpose of determining whether the third prong of the plain error test has been met so that the unpreserved error may be noticed and the appealed sentence vacated. Neither § 3742(f) nor any UNITED STATES v. AMELINE 6383 other part of the Sentencing Reform Act purports to give appellate courts the authority to delegate the decision of whether there has been plain error to the very court whose judgment is being reviewed. Rodriguez, 398 F.3d at 1306 (emphasis added). By characterizing its approach as a “sure” and “certain” way to determine prejudice, the majority demonstrates its misapprehension of the correct standard for determining whether Booker error affected a defendant’s substantial rights. As the Supreme Court most recently stated in Dominguez Benitez, to meet the third prong of the plain error test, “[a] defendant must . . . satisfy the judgment of the reviewing court, informed by the entire record, that the probability of a different result is sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome of the proceeding.” Dominguez Benitez, 124 S. Ct. at 2340 (quotations and citations omitted). Applying this prejudice test to Booker error, the correct inquiry is whether a reasonable probability exists that, but for the Booker error, the outcome of the defendant’s sentencing proceeding would have been different so as to undermine our confidence in the sentence. Kotteakos, 328 U.S. at 764 (a reviewing court must determine “what effect the error had or reasonably may be taken to have had upon the outcome of the proceedings” (emphasis added)). The majority’s failure to grasp that the inquiry is objective, rather than subjective, leads to its notion that it is appropriate “to ask the sentencing judge.” The majority clings to its erro- neous view of the prejudice inquiry to defend the “limited remand” procedure as merely a last resort, after the appellate panel cannot find the answer to whether the district judge “would have imposed a materially different sentence” had the Guidelines been advisory. But that is an irrelevant question under the prejudice inquiry and invites the district judge him- self to speculate about what he would have done in a different world. It is doubtful that most judges will even recall the cir- 6384 UNITED STATES v. AMELINE cumstances of every sentencing hearing over which they have presided since Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000). As appellate judges, we can and should objectively determine, based on a review of the record, whether it is reasonably probable that the defendant’s sentence would have been different but for the Booker error. We do not need, nor is it appropriate to obtain, the subjective views of the sentencing judge. Because the inquiry is not subjective, the views of the sentencing judge are irrelevant. See United States v. Hughes, 401 F.3d 540, 551 (4th Cir. 2005) (“[T]he proper focus is on what actually happened as a result of the error, not what might happen in a subsequent proceeding on remand.”).