Opinion ID: 2679187
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Parting Words

Text: Sevilla's sentencing was fraught with mistakes, misstatements, and omissions on the part of the sentencing judge. The unique posture of this case, arising from a sentencing replete with errors of the court's own making, and concerning an error that no party seeks to defend, is well fit for a simple resolution: remand for a correction of the Rule 11 error and imposition of a new sentence. Instead, the majority now sua sponte chooses to summarily impose the first sentence, which the district court judge himself determined to be erroneous and improper, and which no party has sought to defend on appeal. In so doing, the majority -- from a cold appellate record, and in contravention of the intent and discretion of the sentencing judge -- has increased Sevilla's sentence from just under thirty-four years to life in prison. This life sentence is based in no small part upon uncharged conduct which the district court, in its discretion, ultimately deemed improper to consider in this case. In attempting to defend this resolution, the majority states that Sevilla was put on notice of the fact that, upon remand and resentencing, his ultimate sentence might be greater than the 405 months on appeal. That notice, however, never so much as hinted at the idea that our court might short-circuit the accepted -49- practice of remand, which would have provided Sevilla with a chance to be heard at a new sentencing hearing, and instead simply impose a sentence significantly higher than that from which he appealed.36 From this result, a pyrrhic victory if there ever was one, I respectfully dissent. 36 I know of no other case -- and the majority cites to none -- in which an appellate court undertook to put in place a higher sentence than that from which the defendant's appeal was taken. The unusualness of this situation is surely cold comfort to Sevilla, who (as the majority suggests) will undoubtedly wish[] he had left well enough alone. I hope, however, that it might mitigate the chilling effect of this result, such that future defendants are not made fearful of bringing even meritorious claims on appeal. While the majority seems to chide Sevilla for not quit[ting] while [he was] ahead, I see no humor or harm in a defendant attempting to bring to our court's attention a heavily flawed sentencing process. If Sevilla is seeking another bite at the sentencing apple, our court would do well to recognize that this is because his first was so thoroughly rotten. -50-