Court Opinion

ID: 9631622
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:45:01.12703+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:30:36.929531
License: Public Domain

WEIS, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I agree that the identification enhancement should not have been factored into the Guidelines calculation.
The Guidelines are advisory, not mandatory, and an error in the Guidelines computation may be neutralized by the overarching scrutiny required by the sentencing court’s application of 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a).
The sentence here is substantively reasonable. The District Court set out in detail the factors that affected the sentence. In her remarks from the bench at the hearing, the judge said, in part,
“The law requires that I impose a sentence that is sufficient to but not greater than necessary to fulfill the purpose of sentencing....
First of all, the nature and seriousness of the offense. Quite frankly, the offense is awful. It’s awful. To ruin peoples’ lives, to be held in trust and to betray. These are serious offenses....
[T]his is a very serious offense, and just punishment is required under the law. Because you have done such a terrible thing to so many people you have to be deterred and others have to be deterred who might consider engaging in like conduct. There is a need to be protected from any additional crimes that you might commit and to do that it is my belief that you should be provided with correctional treatment that can most effectively help you to understand what it is that you have done and what the repercussions and consequences are.
The starting point for any sentence ... is the advisory guideline range which I have indicated to you is a level 27, category 1, 70-87 months.”
It is obvious that the district judge intended to impose a substantial sentence. She then explained, “I believe that a sentence within the advisory guideline range does appropriately concern and address all of the concerns of sentencing that I have mentioned this afternoon.”
In my view, our ruling that the Guidelines calculation was erroneous has created substantial uncertainty over the District Court’s intent in sentencing defendant. If *257the judge believed, after performing the overall review, that under § 3553(a) a sentence of 76 months was the appropriate punishment regardless of whether that number came within the Guidelines range, the sentence should be affirmed. On the other hand, if the judge believed that the appropriate sentence must be within the correct Guidelines range, whatever that may be, and did not mean to deviate from it, precedents of this Court would seem to require a remand.
The District Court may have believed that the appropriate sentence under § 3553(a) was a term of 76-months imprisonment and, coincidentally, concluded that the figure was within the erroneous Guidelines computation. The record is ambiguous on this point.
Because they can override the advisory Guidelines, district judges should carefully articulate their rationale in arriving at a sentence under the § 3553(a) calculus in order to avoid unnecessary resentencing.
Because on the record before us I am unable to determine the sentencing judge’s intention, I join in the order to remand.