Opinion ID: 2975557
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: standard of review

Text: Following Booker, we review criminal sentences for reasonableness. United States v. Funk, 477 F.3d 421, 425 (6th Cir. 2007). Reasonableness review has both substantive and procedural components. “A sentence may be considered substantively unreasonable when the district court selects the sentence arbitrarily, bases the sentence on impermissible factors, fails to consider pertinent § 3553(a) factors or gives an unreasonable amount of weight to any pertinent factor.” United States v. Collington, 461 F.3d 805, 808 (6th Cir. 2006) (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted). A sentence may be procedurally unreasonable, on the other hand, if “the district judge fails to consider the applicable Guidelines range or neglects to consider the other factors listed in [section 3553(a)], and instead simply selects what the judge deems an appropriate sentence without such required consideration.” United States v. Webb, 403 F.3d 373, 383 (6th Cir. 2005) (internal quotation marks omitted), cert. denied, 546 U.S. 1126 (2006). Because the Guidelines are now advisory, the district court has the discretion to vary from the Guidelines range in order to comply with the mandate that the sentence be “sufficient, but not greater than necessary” to satisfy the purposes of sentencing set forth in § 3553(a)(2). Collington, 461 F.3d at 807-08. Sentences within the Guidelines range are afforded a presumption of reasonableness, but sentences outside of the Guidelines range are not presumptively unreasonable. Rita v. United States, ___ U.S. ___, 127 S. Ct. 2456, 168 L. Ed. 203, 216 (2007) (recognizing a presumption of reasonableness for within-Guidelines sentences but stating that “appellate courts may not presume that every variance from the advisory Guidelines is unreasonable”). However, the greater the variance outside of the Guidelines range, the more explanation the district court will have to provide and the more persuasive that explanation will have to be. Indeed, “when the district court independently chooses to deviate from the advisory guidelines range (whether above or below it), we apply a form of proportionality review: the farther the judge’s sentence departs from the guidelines sentence . . . the more compelling the justification based on factors in section 3553(a) must be.” United States v. Davis, 458 F.3d 491, 496 (6th Cir. 2006) (internal quotation marks omitted); United States v. Poynter, __ F.3d __, 2007 U.S. App. LEXIS 17808, -22 (6th Cir. July 26, 2007) (noting that the Supreme Court will consider the validity of proportionality review next Term in United States v. Gall, No. 06-7949, and stating that Rita did not undercut continued application of the proportionality principle).