Court Opinion

ID: 9490312
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:40:12.313802+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:02.048293
License: Public Domain

BOOCHEVER, Circuit Judge,
Dissenting.
I agree with the majority that, after granting the § 2255 motion, the trial judge was “permitted to consider all aspects of the sentence.” I also agree that he was not required to do so. Thus, he had the discretion whether to resentence Jones in accordance with the guidelines in effect at the time of the resentencing hearing, including the safety valve provision of 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f), which allowed the court to disregard the five-year statutory minimum for Jones’s offense. Under the guidelines in effect at the time of the resentencing hearing, Jones’s sentence would have been 24-30 months instead of the 60 months to which he was sentenced — a difference of 2 1/2 to 3 years of imprisonment!
I do not believe, however, that the trial judge understood that he had the discretion to resentence Jones in accordance with the current guidelines.
In the order denying defendant’s motion for release pending resentencing, entered after the court had granted the § 2255 motion, the district court seemed to indicate that because the sentence had not been remanded after being vacated on appeal, it had no authority to consider imposing a new term of incarceration.
The court stated:
The cases cited by defendant are inapposite. In United States v. Medrano, 5 F.3d 1214 (9th Cir.1993), United States v. Sustaita, 1 F.3d 950 (9th Cir.1993), and United States v. Fagan, 996 F.2d 1009 (9th Cir.1993), the remands for resentencing were ordered after direct appeals involving the length of the sentences. Accordingly, upon remand, information about the length of the sentences was heard and the length of the sentences reconsidered. In this case, however, the only pertinent issue is the propriety of a $1000 fine____ The length of defendant’s term of incarceration is not at issue.”
[ER 68, 69]
To' me this indicates that the district court did not believe it had discretion to consider all aspects of the sentence. Even if that is not a correct inference, however, it is at best uncertain whether the court knew that it had such discretion in a case not involving “remands for resentencing ... after direct appeals involving the length of the sentences.”
I would remand to the district court, respectfully requesting it to expedite the exercise of its discretion whether “to consider all aspects of the sentence” of this first-time offender.