Court Opinion

ID: 9486335
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:44:48.651969+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:39.314870
License: Public Domain

HEANEY, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
James Bayless asks this court to direct the sentencing court either to remove items not relied upon from his PSR or to determine the accuracy of those items. The majority responds by instructing the district court to ensure that it fully complied with Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32(c)(3)(D). Although I agree that such compliance is mandated both by the rule and by our previous decisions, I do not believe that the majority’s instructions go nearly far enough. Rather, I believe the court should exercise its supervisory power over the district courts in this circuit and remand this case to the district court with instructions either to determine the accuracy of the disputed material in Bay-less’s PSR or to have it stricken.
The Supreme Court and the courts of appeals have long recognized their authority and their responsibility, when ‘“considerations of justice’ ” require, to “formulate procedural rules not specifically required by the Constitution or the Congress.” United States v. Hasting, 461 U.S. 499, 505, 103 S.Ct. 1974, 1978, 76 L.Ed.2d 96 (1983) (quoting McNabb v. United States, 318 U.S. 332, 341, 63 S.Ct. 608, 613, 87 L.Ed. 819 (1943)). The Supreme Court has recognized three purposes for the exercise of our supervisory powers, the first of which is “to implement a remedy for violation of recognized rights.” Id.
*413That prisoners have a right to have their parole determinations and conditions of confinement based on accurate data cannot honestly be disputed. Such a right is implicit in the requirements of Rule 32(c)(3)(D), see Poor Thunder v. United States, 810 F.2d 817, 824 (8th Cir.1987) (“determinations by the Bureau of Prisons as to appropriate placement and treatment of prisoners, and by the United States Parole Commission as to parole, should be based on accurate information”), but sentencing courts that merely satisfy the requirements of the rule may contribute to a future violation of this right. “Indeed, it may be argued that the [r]ule effectively frustrates the congressional intent of preventing controverted matters from influencing decisions by the Bureau of Prisons and the Parole Commission.” United States v. Fernandez-Angulo, 863 F.2d 1449, 1457 n. 7 (9th Cir.1988) (Keller, J., writing for himself), on rehearing, 897 F.2d 1514 (9th Cir.1990) (en banc).
This right is not merely a technical one, as this court recognized in Poor Thunder, in which we held that failure to comply with Rule 32(c)(3)(D) constitutes “ ‘an omission inconsistent with the rudimentary demands of fair procedure,’ ” and that such violations of the rule are cognizable on collateral attack under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. Poor Thunder, 810 F.2d at 822-23 (quoting Hill v. United States, 368 U.S. 424, 428, 82 S.Ct. 468, 471, 7 L.Ed.2d 417 (1962)). Elsewhere we have held that compliance with the rule’s demands is mandatory “ ‘because of the great reliance placed on presentence investigation reports by courts and the Bureau of Prisons and the Parole Commission.’ ” United States v. Shyres, 898 F.2d 647, 658 (8th Cir.) (quoting United States v. Garbett, 867 F.2d 1132, 1136 (8th Cir.1989)), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 821, 111 S.Ct. 69, 112 L.Ed.2d 43 (1990).
This is not a rule that we have allowed the district courts to shrug off lightly, and yet our holding today and previous holdings simply addressing the narrow requirements of the rule, see, e.g., United States v. Beatty, 9 F.3d 686 (8th Cir.1993), appear to assume that improper collateral effects of erroneous information in PSRs will somehow be remedied at a later date. See supra at 412. Such an assumption is ill-founded, for
[although the Parole Commission must itself resolve factual disputes and has a mechanism for doing so, see 28 C.F.R. § 2.19(c), the reality is that prisoners have limited means of challenging facts relayed by the government. They rarely have the benefit of counsel, and parole officials necessarily rely on hearsay evidence. Obtaining the testimony of witnesses may be impossible. Certainly, the better practice is for a probation officer to put in the PSI all information necessary for a guideline determination [by the Parole Commission] so that a defendant will have a meaningful opportunity at the sentencing hearing to challenge the government’s contentions on the facts that form a basis for the parole determination.
United States v. Katzin, 824 F.2d 234, 239 (3d Cir.1987); see also Keith A. Findley & Meredith J. Ross, Comment, Access, Accuracy and Fairness: The Federal Presentence Investigation Report Under Julian and the Sentencing Guidelines, 1989 Wis.L.Rev. 837, 878. The rationale for requiring sentencing courts to resolve disputes over facts relevant to conditions of confinement is even stronger than that regarding parole determinations, because, to my knowledge, the Bureau of Prisons has no mechanism similar to that in 28 C.F.R. § 2.19(c), imperfect as that mechanism is.
Though I do not in any way challenge the integrity of those who keep our penal system functioning, if the goal is to avoid improper consideration of controverted allegations [by the Bureau of Prisons and the Parole Commission], it is seemingly more sensible simply to have the district judge strike from the presentence report any controverted material which he or she does not consider when determining the appropriate sentence.
Fernandez-Angulo, 863 F.2d at 1457 n. 7 (Keller, J., writing for himself).
We would not be the first court to invoke our supervisory power in the sentencing context. The Third Circuit requires that district courts make specific findings on the record of a defendant’s ability to pay restitution under *414both the Probation Act and the Victim and Witness Protection Act, though neither statute so requires. See United States v. Pollak, 844 F.2d 145, 155-56 (3d Cir.1988). The Eleventh Circuit requires that district courts “elicit fully articulated objections, following the imposition of sentence, to the court’s ultimate findings of fact and conclusions of law.” United States v. Jones, 899 F.2d 1097, 1102 (11th Cir.), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 906, 111 S.Ct. 275, 112 L.Ed.2d 230 (1990), overruled on other grounds, United States v. Morrill, 984 F.2d 1136 (11th Cir.1993); see also United States v. Nyhuis, 8 F.3d 731, 743 (11th Cir.1993). And the Ninth Circuit requires that probation officers, as arms of the court, “honor a defendant’s request that his attorney be permitted to accompany him to the presentenee interview.” United States v. Herrera-Figueroa, 918 F.2d 1430, 1434-37 (9th Cir.1990). Each of the circuits imposed these requirements under their supervisory powers.
The Ninth Circuit decision is particularly instructive because one of the rationales for exercising supervisory power in that case was that the probation officer’s refusal to honor the defendant’s request that he be accompanied by his attorney “was not an isolated occurrence but the product of a patchwork system under which different probation officers follow different policies with respect to such requests.” Id. at 1434. Similarly, I am certain that some of the district courts within the Eighth Circuit accommodate defendants’ requests either to make findings or to strike material that may affect either their conditions of confinement or their parole determinations. Courts did so prior to the enactment of Rule 32(c)(3)(D), and I assume that some continue to do so. These courts, which I assume only constitute a minority of the courts within the circuit, probably only do so as they see fit, however, for we have made clear in the past that the rules impose no such requirements. We should remedy this inconsistent treatment by requiring that all district courts follow such a rule.
I recognize, in conclusion, that the majority does not address this argument because, as is its prerogative, it need not address arguments that have not been raised by the parties. We have, however, exercised our supervisory power sua sponte in past cases, see Reserve Mining Co. v. Lord, 529 F.2d 181, 188 (8th Cir.1976), and we should do so here. At a minimum, this argument is left to be raised in future cases, in this circuit and others, by similarly situated defendants.