Opinion ID: 1387484
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Erroneously Treated Guidelines as Mandatory

Text: Brown's third, and final, contention of procedural error is that the District Court erroneously treated the applicable Guidelines range for his crack cocaine offense as mandatory. See Gall, 128 S.Ct. at 597 (holding it is procedural error to treat the Guidelines as mandatory). His argument implicates the Supreme Court's recent decision in Kimbrough v. United States, ___ U.S. ___, 128 S.Ct. 558, 169 L.Ed.2d 481 (2007). In Kimbrough, the Supreme Court held that district courts are free to consider, as part of their analysis of the § 3553(a) factors, the disparity in the Guidelines ranges for offenses involving crack cocaine compared to those for powder cocaine. Id. at 575. The Court made clear that the Guidelines ranges for crack cocaine offenses, like all of the other Guidelines ranges, are advisory only. Id. at 564. Accordingly, it held that it would not be an abuse of discretion for a district court to conclude when sentencing a particular defendant that the crack/powder disparity yields a sentence `greater than necessary' to achieve § 3553(a)'s purposes. . . . Id. at 575. The Supreme Court's decision in Kimbrough was foreshadowed by this Court's decision in Gunter, in which we recognized that there is nothing special about the crack cocaine Sentencing Guidelines that makes them different, or less advisory, than any other Guideline provision. 462 F.3d at 248. Although we made clear that district courts were under no obligation to impose a sentence below the applicable Guidelines range solely on the basis of the crack/powder cocaine differential, we held that a district court errs when it believes that it has no discretion to consider the crack/powder cocaine differential . . . as simply advisory at step three of the post- Booker sentencing process (imposing the actual sentence after considering the relevant § 3553(a) factors). Id. at 249, 125 S.Ct. 738. Consequently, in that case, we vacated a defendant's sentence and remanded for resentencing when the district court's remarks indicated that it believed it was bound to follow the Guidelines for crack offenses. Id. Brown argues that the District Court committed a similar error here. According to Brown, his sentence must be vacated because Kimbrough was decided after the District Court sentenced him and the record does not make clear whether the District Court understood the full scope of its discretion to consider the crack/powder disparity in imposing sentence. (Letter from Brown's counsel to Court (Dec. 20, 2007).) The record belies that contention. In this case, unlike in Gunter, there is simply no indication that the District Court believed it lacked authority to consider the crack/powder cocaine disparity as part of its § 3553(a) analysis. On the contrary, there is every indication that the District Court did understand that it had that authority. In responding to Brown's argument that the Court should take that disparity into account in determining the sentence to impose, the District Court stated, I do consider the powder/crack cocaine disparity. I think the Court should. I think the guideline range is much higher, much, much higher than it would be had the defendant been dealing powder cocaine, so I consider that in the calculations. (Brown App. at 791.) The District Court's statements at the sentencing hearing were consistent with our holding in Gunter and the Supreme Court's holding in Kimbrough. Read as a whole, the Court's remarks at sentencing show that it understood that it could sentence Brown outside the Guidelines range but chose not to. We therefore reject Brown's assertion that the District Court erroneously treated the Guidelines as mandatory. [12] Brown nevertheless cites the Ninth Circuit's recent grant of a petition for rehearing in United States v. Casteneda, 511 F.3d 1246 (9th Cir.2008), as support for his argument that his sentence must be vacated and remanded for the District Court to reconsider his sentence in light of Kimbrough. Casteneda, however, is clearly distinguishable. There, the district court, in responding to a defendant's request that the court consider the crack/powder cocaine disparity, stated, I don't believe it's appropriate for the Court to, specifically reduce a sentence under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) on the basis that the Congress and the U.S. Sentencing Commission are wrong in establishing different penalties for different types of controlled substances. Id. at 1248. On a petition for rehearing, the Ninth Circuit vacated the defendant's sentence and remanded for resentencing because the district court's statements reflected that the district court did not foresee the extension of its Booker discretion that would be announced two years later by the Supreme Court in Kimbrough. Thus, the district court did not feel free to consider whether any unwarranted disparity created by the crack/powder ratio produced a sentence `greater than necessary' to achieve § 3553(a)'s purposes. [ Kimbrough, 128 S.Ct.] at 574-75. Id. In contrast to the district court's comments in Casteneda, the District Court's remarks in this case indicate that it understood that it could consider the crack/powder cocaine disparity as part of its consideration of the § 3553(a) factors. Moreover, as noted above, the District Court in this case had the benefit of this Court's decision in Gunter, which, consistent with the Supreme Court's decision in Kimbrough, held that a district court may impose a sentence below the applicable Guidelines range because the Guidelines for crack offenses are no more mandatory than the Guidelines for any other offense.