Court Opinion

ID: 9499235
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:41:48.838319+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:21.985995
License: Public Domain

BYE, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
Because I believe we should give “deference to the broad discretion visited upon sentencing courts under the now-advisory guideline system,” United States v. McDonald, 461 F.3d 948, 957 (8th Cir.2006) (Bye, J., dissenting), I concur in affirming Zachary Zeigler’s sentence. I feel obliged to write separately, however, to reiterate a point I made in McDonald about our court’s tendency to affirm sentences above the advisory guideline range and to reverse sentences imposed below the guideline range. See id. at 960 (listing the upward departures which this court has affirmed as well as the downward departures it has reversed).
In upward departure cases, we have focused in part upon the district court’s lack of an extended discussion of the § 3553(a) factors as a justification for reversing and remanding a case to the district court. See, e.g., United States v. Myers, 439 F.3d 415, 419 (8th Cir.2006) (remanding “for imposition of sentence following more explicit and thorough consideration of all factors enumerated in section 3553(a)” where district court did not do so in the first instance). In this case, the district court only perfunctorily indicated it had “considered” the § 3553(a) factors. If we pre*821tend, for a moment, this case were one in which the guidelines called for a sentence of twenty-four months at the low end of the advisory range, and the district court had departed downward 400% to six months, with the same sparse comments about consideration of the § 3553(a) factors, I seriously doubt the district court’s decision would have survived our appellate review.
Thus, although I concur in the judgment because I believe the sentence imposed by the able district court judge is reasonable, I once again call for this court to take a critical look at the disparity in our treatment of upward and downward departure cases.