Court Opinion

ID: 9495065
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:53:39.44058+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:47.681212
License: Public Domain

GRABER, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring:
I agree with the majority’s analysis except in one respect: the holding that separate, specific notice is required before a district judge may depart through the imposition of consecutive sentences. • Accordingly, I concur specially.
There are four reasons why I disagree with the majority’s holding concerning notice of contemplated consecutive sentences. (1) The holding of United States v. Brady, 928 F.2d 844 (9th Cir.1991), abrogated in part on other grounds by Nichols v. United States, 511 U.S. 738, 114 S.Ct. 1921, 128 L.Ed.2d 745 (1994), has been vitiated by a later Supreme Court decision and by a clarifying decision from this court. (2) The majority’s logic is inconsistent with the clear holding of our other cases that consecutive sentences are merely a form of departure, not a separate species. (3) There is no policy justification for the majority’s holding. (4) Because Defendant had notice of the possibility of consecutive sentences, before the sentencing hearing took place, he is not entitled to any relief even under the majority’s theory. I will discuss each of those reasons in turn.
First, in the light of subsequent cases, Brady does not control. Two cases decided shortly after Brady undercut the text on which the majority relies: United States v. Pedrioli, 931 F.2d 31 (9th Cir.1991), and Burns v. United States, 501 U.S. 129, 111 S.Ct. 2182, 115 L.Ed.2d 123 (1991).
The Brady panel erred when it failed to follow the rule that this court had announced in United States v. Wills, 881 F.2d 823 (9th Cir.1989): despite § 5G1.2’s mandatory text regarding consecutive versus concurrent sentences, consecutive sen*1198tences are permissible under the Guidelines as a departure. By contrast, Brady described the Guidelines’ position on consecutive versus concurrent sentences as if it were absolute. 928 F.2d at 849-50. After Brady, Pedrioli reaffirmed the rule established in Wills and held that the district court may exercise its discretion under § 3584 and impose consecutive sentences as a departure when sentencing a defendant on multiple counts — even when the Guidelines would “require! ] ... sentences to overlap.” Pedrioli, 931 F.2d at 32.1 Pedrioli distinguished Brady to harmonize it with Wills and limit it to its facts:
[Brady] does not change this rule. While Brady reversed a district court’s imposition of consecutive sentences, it did so because the district court’s departure from guideline practice was unexplained and “unreasonable,” not because the district court lacked authority to depart from the guidelines and impose consecutive sentences.
Pedrioli, 931 F.2d at 32 n. 1.
Pedrioli identified “the difficult question” as “whether a district court is obliged to follow the usual procedures for .departing from the guidelines when it elects to use its discretion under § 3584(a) to diverge from the guideline’s recommendations.” Id. at 32 (emphasis added). Pedrioli answered that question in the affirmative: As long as the district court follows the “usual” departure procedures, electing consecutive sentences over concurrent sentences for multiple counts is within the court’s discretion. Id. Pedrioli explicitly described the procedural steps that a district court must follow before departing through the mechanism of consecutive sentences. The court did not include any special notice requirements as to the mechanism of the departure, as distinct from the reasons for the departure:
The guideline procedures for departure require that the district court specify the ground for its decision on the record, that the court make accurate findings of fact as to that ground, that the ground for departure be based on reasonable factors not considered by the guidelines, and that the extent of the departure be reasonable.
Id. at 32 n. 2. Thus, Pedrioli — which postdated and severely limited Brady — emphasized that the notice requirements concern the substantive reasons for the departure, not the means by which the departure is imposed.
A few months after this court decided Pedrioli, the United States Supreme Court issued its opinion in Bums. There, the Supreme Court defined the notice requirements for departing from the Sentencing Guidelines. Construing Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32(a)(1), the Court held that “Rule 32 requires that the district court give the parties reasonable notice that it is contemplating” a departure and that the district court “must specifically identify the ground on which” it is considering the departure. Burns, 501 U.S. at 138-39, 111 S.Ct. 2182. The Court recognized that Rule 32 requires an informed adversarial process and emphasized that notice of the substantive ground for the contemplated departure was necessary. See id. at 136-37, 111 S.Ct. 2182 (stating that, “[b]ecause the Guidelines place essen*1199tially no limit on the number of potential factors that may warrant a departure, no one is in a position to guess when or on what grounds a district court might depart”). As we had done in Pedrioli, the Court concerned itself with the substantive reasons underlying a departure decision. However, Bums did not require special notice for a particular departure mechanism. Notably, too, the Court in Bums did not suggest that the extent of the contemplated departure was a separate subject of the required notice, nor does Rule 32 suggest this result independently. The effect of the majority’s holding is to read into Rule 32 and Bums an additional notice requirement for the mechanism and the extent of a potential departure.
Read together, Pedrioli and Bums establish that notice of the substantive ground for departure is the only procedural safeguard that must be followed before a district court departs from the Guidelines. Once the district court informs the parties of its intent to depart and of the substantive grounds underlying that intent, the parties can prepare adequately for the sentencing healing. With substantive notice, the parties have the meaningful opportunity, afforded by Rule 32 and the Court’s interpretation of it in Bums, to convince the district court to adhere to the Guidelines instead of departing. Additional notice of the specific mechanism or extent contemplated does not make that opportunity any more meaningful.
Second, defining different requirements for this particular form of departure undermines the logic of Wills and Pedrioli. Those cases managed to harmonize a serious potential conflict: Section 5G1.2 of the Guidelines clearly mandates consecutive sentences or concurrent sentences in certain circumstances, but § 3584 just as clearly leaves the decision to the district court in its discretion. Wills and Pedrioli fit those provisions together by classifying the imposition of consecutive or concurrent sentencing as a garden-variety departure. Creating a special notice requirement for one form of departure revives the tension that Wills and Pedrioli resolved.
Third, requiring the district court to take an additional step in the sentencing process unnecessarily complicates Guidelines procedures. When a district court contemplates any departure, it contemplates leaving the Guidelines sentence behind. As long as the parties are, informed of the substantive grounds for the contemplated departure, they have the information they need to prepare effectively their evidence and arguments for or against adherence to the Guidelines.
The majority’s holding also creates an ambiguity that will affect many, if not all, sentencing hearings in which the district court contemplates the possibility of a departure. It is not correct to say that a departure is necessarily larger or more significant just because it is in the form of consecutive sentences.2 If the point of a separate notice is to alert the defendant to the potential for a big departure, then that logic applies equally any time the district court is considering a significant departure. The practical result will be to require notice of the proposed extent of the departure in many cases, but to create *1200confusion as to just which departures are significant enough to require separate notice.3
Fourth and finally, creating a separate-notice rule is not necessary on this record. Bums does not require that the district court deliver notice of a potential ground for departure. Instead, Bums recognizes that, normally, the defendant and the government will have notice of a potential ground for departure either in the presen-tence report (PSR) or in the government’s sentencing recommendations. Bums, 501 U.S. at 135, 111 S.Ct. 2182. Only in the “extraordinary” case in which the district court, “on its own initiative and contrary to the expectations of both the defendant and the Government,” wants to depart for a particular reason is the district court required to notify the parties of its inclination. Id.
Here, Defendant had specific notice of the possibility not only of a departure, but also of a departure by means of a consecutive sentence. The PSR stated that Defendant’s extreme conduct may warrant a departure under § 5K2.8. In its objections to the PSR, the government encouraged the district court to depart through the imposition of consecutive sentences. Defendant received the government’s objections and responded specifically to the government’s argument for consecutive sentences.
After considering both arguments, the district court chose to depart upward by imposing consecutive sentences. I would decline to extend Bums to require any additional form of notice beyond that provided in the PSR and the government’s objections simply because the district court chose to depart by imposing consecutive sentences, rather than by increasing the length of the prescribed sentence for each separate crime. As long as the district court departed on the ground specified in the PSR — “extreme conduct” — the notice requirements of Bums and Rule 32 were satisfied.
Despite my disagreement with the majority’s holding that requires separate notice of a possible departure by means of consecutive sentences, I concur in the result on this issue. Defendant had notice of only one substantive ground for departure — “extreme conduct.”4 Because the district court departed on an additional, unspecified, substantive ground (§ 4A1.3, *1201extensive criminal history), I agree that we must remand for resentencing.

. Other circuits that have considered this issue agree. United States v. Bradford, 246 F.3d 1107, 1114 n. 3 (8th Cir.2001) (per cu-riam); United States v. Hui, 83 F.3d 592, 593-94 (2d Cir.1996) (per curiam); United States v. Quinones, 26 F.3d 213, 217 (1st Cir.1994); United States v. Perez, 956 F.2d 1098, 1103 (11th Cir.1992) (per curiam); United States v. Martinez, 950 F.2d 222, 226 (5th Cir.1991); United States v. Stewart, 917 F.2d 970, 973 (6th Cir.1990).

. For example, suppose that a defendant is convicted of three crimes. Assume that the Guidelines sentence for Crimes 1 and 2 is 72 months each, while the Guidelines sentence for Crime 3 is 24 months. District Judge X decides to depart by keeping each sentence within the Guidelines but having the sentence for Crime 3 run consecutively to the sentences for Crimes 1 and 2 (which will run concurrently), for a total of 96 months. District Judge Y decides to depart upwardly by 24 months for Crimes 1 and 2, to adhere to the Guidelines for Crime 3, and to run all sentences concurrently, again for a total of 96 months. There is no principled reason to give a different notice in those two situations.

. Past experience proves that the question of a departure's significance is not easily answered. In 1991, an en baric court decided that, generally, sentencing factors must be established by a preponderance of the evidence. United States v. Restrepo, 946 F.2d 654, 659 (9th Cir.1991) (en banc). However, we recognized a possible exception for factors that have an “extremely disproportionate effect” on the sentence relative to the crime of conviction. Id. More than 10 years later, our circuit still struggles to decide whether a particular sentencing factor has such an "extremely disproportionate effect.” See, e.g., United States v. Romero-Rendon, 220 F.3d 1159, 1161 (9th Cir.) (noting "uncertainty in this circuit as to when the higher burden of proof applies”), cert. denied, 531 U.S. 1043, 121 S.Ct. 640, 148 L.Ed.2d 546 (2000); United States v. Jordan, 256 F.3d 922, 934-35 (9th Cir.2001) (O’Scannlain, J., concurring) (describing years of confusion regarding when the higher burden of proof applies).

. The district court did not give the parties any notice, beyond that provided by the PSR, that it was contemplating any other ground for departure. Compare United States v. Hernandez, 251 F.3d 1247, 1252 (9th Cir.), amended by 280 F.3d 1216 (9th Cir.2001) (holding that notice was adequate where grounds were not included in the PSR but the district court informed the defendant, at the beginning of the sentencing hearing, of an intention to depart).