Opinion ID: 215505
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Sentencing Memorandum

Text: At the outset, we disagree with the Government that arguments relating to the court's memorandum have been waived. As described above, the court entered the sentencing document on its docket as a memorandum and opinion, and referred to it in court as an order. We accept the court's characterizations, which connote finality, at face value. Under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 51(a), [e]xceptions to rulings or orders of the court are unnecessary. See also Bartlett, 567 F.3d at 910 ([T]he rules do not require a litigant to complain about a judicial choice after it has been made.). Instead, preserving a claim is ordinarily accomplished by raising the issue in advance of the ruling. See Fed.R.Crim.P. 51(b). Moreover, [i]f a party does not have an opportunity to object to a ruling or order, the absence of an objection does not later prejudice that party. Id. Here, the record does not reveal to what extent the defendants were on notice of the court's impending filing, and in any case under these unusual circumstances we could not ask them to anticipate the contents of the document. Turning to the merits, we observe that court's memorandum is apparently sui generis; it is not entirely clear what rule or precedent might govern its propriety. See Elizabeth G. Thornburg, The Curious Appellate Judge: Ethical Limits on Independent Research, 28 REV. LITIG. 131, 169 (2008) (Principles relevant to judicial research come from the worlds of ethics, evidence, procedure, and the Constitution.). The court obviously did not apply the strictures of judicial notice under Federal Rule of Evidence 201, [4] but the material in the memorandum was not treated as judicially noticed fact. [5] Fortunately, we need not find a home in legal taxonomy for the court's memorandum. As indicated, we reject the defendants' assertion that the district court's filing exceeded the powers of the judiciary established in Article III of the Constitution. We emphatically decline this invitation to set limits on a judge's powers to educate himself on matters relevant to sentencing. We find nothing in the cases cited by the defendants or in our own research that directs such restrictions, [6] and we are unwilling to recognize significant limitations on the judicial branch in establishing a perspective on charged crimesparticularly little-known crimes. Moreover, the defendants' citation of Figueroa is completely unpersuasive. There is no indication that any agitated or expansive language here about broad social problems associated with dog fighting had any direct application to these sentences. Here, the judge repeatedly stated that the material in its memorandum was not being attributed to the defendants. We certainly accept the court's representation. See, e.g., Lucini Italia Co. v. Grappolini, 288 F.3d 1035, 1038 (7th Cir.2002) (taking the district court at its word about an argument it stated it did not consider). In fact, the sentencing hearing in the present case was routine except for the unusual number of defendants. If this were a drug possession case, a court's comments about related pervasive social problems would be taken as routine. Here, the judge carefully and serially distinguished the evidence related to each of seven co-conspirators. The arguably inflammatory language of the memorandum was absent from the imposition of the respective sentences. [7] The judge hewed to the § 3553 factors. Judges generally are under no obligation to relate all they have learned about a species of crime from whatever source to those accused of the crime in question. We note with approval that the district court was concerned with giving the parties the opportunity to comment on the general reference material it consulted. To do so here was in keeping with the spirit of, but not required by, the Code of Conduct for United States Judges in the sense that the Code of Conduct requires judges to give parties an opportunity to respond to ex parte communications. [8] If the judge in this case had read the same background material and not informed the parties (which is common practice, and not objectionable), it might not have reflected such a sensitive respect for the adversary process. Nevertheless, we do not rule out the possibility that where there has been a litany of inflammatory remarks, Figueroa, 622 F.3d at 744, we cannot be as certain as we are here that they did not influence the sentence. In other words, relevant to our affirmance is our confidence that the district court did not attribute to the defendants the evils related in the sentencing memorandum. On the whole, we believe the district court's recourse to, and handling of a sentencing memorandum was unusually sensitive to the rights of the parties and provided them and the court with an appropriate perspective on the sentencing task.