Opinion ID: 201728
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Institutional concerns predominate

Text: 92 We should show that same flexibility here. The fourth step requires us to focus on the larger, institutional consequences of the error (as expressed by the phrase the public reputation of judicial proceedings), not only on the consequences of the error for the defendant before us. Here, those institutional concerns should include the importance of courts following explicit rules that Congress has prescribed. Of course courts will sometimes go astray, 6 as in this case. However, when the burden of getting it right is so minimal, the obligation to make the correction is that much greater. We are not confronted here with the prospect of redoing trials, or plea proceedings, or even sentencing hearings. Instead, at most, the sentencing judge, with input from the prosecution and defense counsel, has to correct the improper delegation of authority to a probation officer and set the maximum number of drug tests. 93 Congress has said, for reasons that may not be fully apparent to us, that judges rather than probation officers should set the maximum number of drug tests. We acknowledged that uncertainty about Congress's rationale in Meléndez-Santana itself: Legislative history does not reveal why Congress chose to go in a different direction from a policy permitting judges to delegate such decisions. United States v. Meléndez-Santana, 353 F.3d 93, 106 (1st Cir.2003). The majority views Congress's commitment of these kinds of decisions to the courts as merely statutory and, in the final analysis, not particularly important. I acknowledge that, before 1994, probation officers had the discretion to set the maximum number of drug tests. Still, Congress has made a decision to alter that practice, and we should respect that choice by correcting the error that undermines it. 94 With a minimal expenditure of judicial resources, we can show that respect and thereby avoid a misapplication of the plain-error doctrine which, rather than preserving the integrity of plain-error review, repudiates our recent willingness to apply that doctrine flexibly in the sentencing context. Such flexibility does not threaten to open the floodgates of easy error correction, and burdensome retrials and resentencing, as the majority may fear. We will retain our ability to distinguish between types of error and the contexts in which they occur. The integrity of plain-error review does not suffer from its sensible application.