Opinion ID: 760180
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Consequences of the Error

Text: 26 Having found that the district court erred in attempting to credit Montez-Gaviria's sentence directly for the uncredited time he served in state custody and that the district court, as an alternative to a direct credit, could have chosen to depart downward, we now turn to the issue of whether we should remand to the district court to enable it to reconsider its decision not to depart downward by more than one level. Montez-Gaviria contends that resentencing is appropriate. He asserts that the district court, had it known that it could not control the date that Montez-Gaviria's sentence began, would most likely have departed downward by more than it did. The government, on the other hand, claims that the district court made it abundantly clear that it would not grant Montez-Gaviria more than a one-level departure and that no connection exists between the district court's mistake and its decision to limit its departure to one level. It therefore urges us to remand the case only for the limited purpose of striking the portion of the sentence that seeks to determine the commencement of Montez-Gaviria's sentence. 27 While the relationship between the district court's mistaken sentencing credit and its decision to depart downward by only one level is less certain than Montez-Gaviria would have us believe, we do not think that the district court considered the departure and the sentence commencement issues separately. During the sentencing hearing, Montez-Gaviria's counsel raised the matter of his client's uncredited time served, asserting it as an additional reason for departing downward by more than one level. After the court expressed concern about this uncredited time, the government suggested directly crediting Montez-Gaviria's time served as an alternative to a two-level departure. 5 Prior to that point, the parties and the court, in discussing Montez-Gaviria's uncredited state time, had focused solely on whether that time should lead to a two-level departure. And, until the government raised the sentencing credit option, the court had been considering the uncredited incarceration as one of the most important factors in the decision it was about to make. 28 Accordingly, it is not surprising that the sentencing hearing transcript does not support the government's position that the district court would have granted only a one-level departure even if it had known that it could not give Montez-Gaviria a direct sentence credit. The district judge expressed his inclination that a one-level (rather than two-level) departure was appropriate only after the government had introduced the possibility of the sentence credit. He did this, in other words, when he no longer believed that a downward departure was the only way that he could take into account Montez-Gaviria's time served in state custody. 6 29 At a minimum, this makes the record unclear as to whether the district court's mistaken belief that it could directly credit Montez-Gaviria's time served in state custody influenced its decision not to depart downward by more than one level. When the record is ambiguous as to whether a district court has allowed a mistake of law to affect its sentencing decision, we have regularly remanded to allow the court to reconsider its decision in light of our correction of the mistake. See, e.g., United States v. Ogbondah, 16 F.3d 498, 501 (2d Cir.1994) (remanding where there was a real possibility that the court misunderstood its power to depart downward); United States v. Trzaska, 859 F.2d 1118, 1121 (2d Cir.1988) (remanding in light of the ambiguity in the record as to whether the district court complied with the requirements of Fed.R.Crim.P. 32(a)(1)). In such cases, we do not decide whether the district court's mistake actually affected its application of the Guidelines, we simply conclude that that is a question best answered by the district court itself. 7 F. Scope of Resentencing 30 During the sentencing hearing, the district court considered departing downward both on the basis of Montez-Gaviria's uncredited time and of his stipulation not to contest deportation upon the completion of his sentence. The court decided, with the government's consent, to grant a one-level departure in view of the stipulated deportation. It follows that, if we remand for plenary resentencing, the question of whether Montez-Gaviria should receive a downward departure on the basis of his agreement to be deported might again arise. For the reasons that follow, that question may not be a simple one. 31 The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York began agreeing to downward departures based on consented deportation as part of an experimental program initiated in response to a memorandum that the Attorney General issued in April 1995 authorizing U.S. Attorneys to consent to a one or two-level downward departure in return for a stipulated agreement by a criminal alien defendant to accept a final order of deportation. The downward departures were intended to facilitate the deportation of criminal aliens. 32 Pursuant to its program, the Southern District U.S. Attorney's Office has regularly consented to one-level departures under Sentencing Guidelines § 5K2.0, the catch-all departure provision, in cases of stipulated deportation. While some other districts within this circuit, including the District of Connecticut and the Western District of New York, have routinely granted two-level departures, courts in the Southern District have generally given only one-level departures in such cases. 33 But the fact that the government has agreed to such departures did not resolve the issue of whether, and under what circumstances, a sentencing court in fact has the authority to depart downward on the basis of a defendant's stipulation to deportation. And, on various aspects of this question, the circuits have divided. 34 Thus, the Ninth Circuit has held that because the executive branch, rather than the court, deports an alien defendant, the sentencing court may only depart downward if the government requests such a departure. See United States v. Flores-Uribe, 106 F.3d 1485, 1486-88 (9th Cir.1997). The First Circuit, instead, did not concern itself with the relevance of the government's consent, but countenanced the possibility of departing downward on the basis of stipulated deportation only if the defendant shows that by doing so he or she is waiving a nonfrivolous defense to deportation. See United States v. Clase-Espinal, 115 F.3d 1054, 1058 & n. 6 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 118 S.Ct. 384, 139 L.Ed.2d 299 (1997). The First Circuit's rationale for this condition is that unless the defendant is forgoing a valid defense, the waiver is unlikely to reduce significantly the time and resources expended in the deportation process. The Third Circuit has adopted both the Ninth Circuit's requirement that the government agree to the departure and the First Circuit's condition that the defendant's stipulation involve a waiver of nonfrivolous defenses. See United States v. Marin-Castaneda, 134 F.3d 551, 555-56 (3d Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 118 S.Ct. 1855, 140 L.Ed.2d 1103 (1998). We have, on at least one prior occasion, cited this disagreement among the courts and expressly resolved the case then before us without deciding the issue. See United States v. Zapata, 135 F.3d 844, 847-48 (2d Cir.1998). 35 To make matters more complicated, in November 1997, the Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the Justice Department sent a memorandum to all federal prosecutors who handle cases involving alien defendants in which he cautioned that recent developments had cast doubt on whether such departures remained appropriate. The 1997 memorandum noted that the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRAIRA), Pub.L. No. 104-208, 110 Stat. 1570, 1701-1703 (1996), streamlin[ed] the removal process for many alien defendants, thus substantially reduc[ing] the benefit the Government derives solely from an alien's concession of alienage and stipulation to removal. And the Assistant Attorney General also cited the First Circuit's holding in Clase-Espinal that a defendant's consent to deportation was not a valid basis for departing downward from the Sentencing Guidelines unless the defendant in so doing waived a nonfrivolous defense to deportation. See 115 F.3d at 1058 n. 6. As a result, in July 1998, the U.S. Attorneys for the Southern District and Eastern District of New York informed the chief judges of those districts that they would no longer support downward departures for alien defendants who consented to deportation. In this case, the government has taken the position that [w]hile there may be the occasional rare case in which a defendant's stipulation to deportation is truly extraordinary and provides the Government with significant and unique benefits warranting a departure, in the routine case there is nothing extraordinary about a defendant's stipulation to deportation and it provides the Government with little benefit. 36 Apparently because of this change in policy, the government initially told Montez-Gaviria's counsel that it would not agree to a downward departure based on his client's consent to deportation if we were to remand for resentencing. But the government has subsequently reconsidered its position and now states that it will not challenge the downward departure, grounded on Montez-Gaviria's consent to deportation, that the district court granted during his original sentencing. 37 It follows from this discussion that ordering a plenary remand of the instant case might require resolution of a difficult issue of law that is unresolved in this circuit, that neither party raised during the initial sentencing or on appeal, and that--given the government's specific promise not to revisit the issue in this case upon resentencing--neither of them wishes to contest now. Accordingly, we see no benefits from a plenary remand. Under the circumstances, by limiting our remand to the only portion of the district court's sentencing decision potentially affected by its mistake (the question of whether Montez-Gaviria's time in state custody should be taken into account by means of a downward departure), we choose to avoid creating the possible necessity of deciding whether stipulated-deportation departures are valid. 38 We also instruct the district court not to proceed with resentencing until Montez-Gaviria is again present. In one sense, given our limited remand, the sentence that Montez-Gaviria might receive upon remand cannot be harsher than the sentence he actually received at his initial sentencing. But unless the district court grants him a downward departure that reduces his jail time by at least eight months, 8 his new sentence will be more severe than what his sentence appeared to be originally. We think that suffices to make resentencing without Montez-Gaviria's presence inappropriate.