Court Opinion

ID: 9478976
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:05:11.106083+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:45.429380
License: Public Domain

COFFIN and BOWNES, Circuit Judges
(dissenting).
We accept, with appreciation, the court’s concession that the test for this appeal is whether the circumstances of the district court’s resentencing could instill in appellants a “reasonable apprehension of vindictiveness” on the part of the judge. Longval v. Meachum, 693 F.2d 236, 237 (1st Cir.1982).
We are perplexed, however, why the majority then proceeds to contradict directly the standard that it concedes is controlling. It states that “there must be some evidence of actual, or at least apparent, vindictive motivation before a due process violation can be claimed.” At 13-14. An “actual vindictiveness” requirement has been rejected by both the Supreme Court, see, e.g., Pearce, 395 U.S. 711, 89 S.Ct. 2072, 23 L.Ed.2d 656 (1969), and by the First Circuit, see Longval, 693 F.2d 236 (1st Cir.1982); United States v. Mazzaferro, 865 F.2d 450, 457-58 (1st Cir.1989). Yet the majority’s opinion is crafted on the assumption that actual vindictiveness must be shown.
The due process concerns underlying Pearce are no less prevalent in resentenc-ing after an appeal than they are in resen-tencing after reconviction for offenses reversed on appeal. See Robinson v. Scully, 690 F.2d 21, 24 (2d Cir.1982). The Supreme Court has commented that a “judge who has been reversed, will have ... [a] personal stake in the prior conviction and ... [a] motivation to engage in self-vindication.” Chaffin v. Stynchcombe, 412 U.S. 17, 26-27, 93 S.Ct. 1977, 1982-83, 36 L.Ed.2d 714 (1973).
The cases cited by the majority as evidence of a restrictive reading of Pearce do not modify this teaching one iota. In Chaffin, it was held permissible after a successful appeal for a different jury to give a higher sentence than the first jury because the second jury was not informed of the prior sentence. Chaffin, 412 U.S. at 35, 93 S.Ct. at 1986. Under such circumstances, there could be no apprehension of vindictiveness. This is to be contrasted with the instant case where the same judge increased the sentence for the same offense. Likewise in Colten, 407 U.S. 104, 92 S.Ct. 1953, 32 L.Ed.2d 584 (1972), the imposition of a higher sentence after a de novo trial was held permissible in jurisdictions that employ a two-tier system of trial courts because here also there were two different courts involved in the sentencing, an inferi- or court and a superior court. Wasman, 468 U.S. 559, 104 S.Ct. 3217, is the only case cited by the majority in which a great*18er sentence imposed by the same judge on retrial was upheld. The Supreme Court permitted this enhancement only because of an intervening conviction of the defendant for another crime, holding that after retrial and conviction following a defendant’s successful appeal, a sentencing authority may justify an increased sentence by affirmatively identifying relevant conduct or events that occurred subsequent to the original sentencing proceedings. It is not disputed that no such additional conduct or events has occurred in the instant case.1
In this case we cannot escape the conclusion that at least the potential for a reasonable apprehension of vindictiveness existed in the circumstances of the case at bar where the defendants were resentenced by the same judge who originally imposed sentence after their convictions were partially reversed on appeal due to an error in that judge’s instructions to the jury.
Pearce requires that we presume that the district judge increased the defendants’ sentences on count II in violation of their due process rights unless it is apparent from the record that the increased sentences were “based upon objective information concerning identifiable conduct on the part of the defendant occurring after the time of the original sentencing proceeding.” Pearce, 395 U.S. at 726, 89 S.Ct. at 2081.
In resentencing Pimienta Redondo and Pupo, the district court did not rely upon any conduct on the part of the defendants occurring after the original sentencing procedure. App. at 15-16, 27. Rather, the court simply stated that the total period of incarceration imposed on each defendant for Count II was the same that it had originally intended to impose for the offenses committed.
Whether or not we would accept the word of a trusted and respected colleague is quite beside the point, for we are dealing with defendants’ reasonable fear of vindictiveness. Therefore we must distance ourselves from our own knowledge of the judge and view from a more remote point, and even with a jaundiced eye, post hoc explanations without record corroboration.
Some courts have held that where it is clear that a sentencing judge has increased a defendant’s sentence to comport with initial sentencing intentions, there is no presumption of vindictiveness. See United States v. Guevremont, 829 F.2d 423, 427 (3d Cir.1987); United States v. Colunga, 812 F.2d 196, 200 (5th Cir.1987); see also United States v. Jefferson, 714 F.2d 689, 707 n. 34 (7th Cir.1983) (appellate court has power to vacate entire sentence and remand to allow judge to carry out clear intentions of a sentencing package). This is not such a case. There is nothing in the record that would allow us to determine the sentencing judge’s intentions when the defendants were first sentenced.2
The record before us shows that the district court viewed counts I and II as two separate offenses. The court instructed the jury to view them as such, and the court imposed separate sentences for each offense, to run consecutively. From the government’s urgings at trial concerning the separate nature of the two counts and our prior decision in Christensen, see majority opinion at n. 2, supra, the district court was in all probability persuaded to view 21 U.S.C. § 955a(a) (Count I) as an offense involving any person on any vessel that the U.S. lawfully is able to seize and 21 U.S.C. § 955a(c) (Count II) as an offense involving vessels in U.S. customs waters.3 *19In these circumstances, the defendants, having successfully appealed their convictions on one count, reasonably could expect the sentence under the remaining count to stay the same.
The court majority, under the ground rules we have adopted — reasonable apprehension of vindictiveness — is compelled to say that such an expectation is unreasonable. This might be true in a case where one count was obviously the tail and the other the dog. But the case at bar stands at least in a gray area where a defendant could reasonably believe that the court had made an independent sentence assessment for each count.
To talk, as the court does, about the sentencing court crafting “a disposition in which the sentences on the various counts form part of an overall plan” is really to say that the only stable factor in the “plan” is the bottom line, the total sentence to be served. The components can drop out of the picture, the “plan” can be radically reshaped, but the bottom line is sacrosanct.
The concept of permitting the “retrofitting” or rewriting of such a malleable, crafted overall plan is, we think, demeaning. Moreover, it is totally unnecessary to resort to such a fiction. The issue is not one that must be resolved by circumscribing what a defendant may reasonably apprehend. We realize that sentencing under the new guidelines may effectively moot such questions. But even apart from them, a court can easily avoid the troubling due process problems we face here by either (1) making clear at initial sentencing that each count would independently merit the total sentence given or (2) impose sentences to run concurrently on each count. Cf. McClain v. United States, 676 F.2d 915, 918 (2d Cir.1982) (remand for resentencing on one count of two count conviction after only one count is vacated is not unconstitutional when statute required sentencing judge initially to impose consecutive sentences); United States v. Diaz, 834 F.2d 287 (2d Cir.1987).
We do not think we would be faithful to the mandate of Pearce if we presumed an absence of vindictiveness in resentencing merely because, upon resentencing the defendants, the district court indicated that its original unstated intentions remained the same. But see United States v. Hagler, 709 F.2d 578, 579 (9th Cir.1983); United States v. Shue, 825 F.2d 1111, 1116 (7th Cir.1987). Were such an easy, open-ended, and unreviewable means of preserving the length of a cumulative period of incarceration readily available to sentencing judges, there would loom over the re-sentencing process an appearance of vindictiveness that would likely chill defendants’ incentives to appeal their convictions. True, here the total sentence remained the same. Defendants, therefore, are not chilled in the sense of fearing an increase in their sentences if they lose their appeals. But a defendant, appealing his convictions on two counts, faces one chance of overturning both, one chance of overturning one conviction, and one of losing on both; to say that his only chance of improving his situation is to win on both counts, is to lessen considerably the odds. This, we think, is chilling to a putative appellant. To avoid the apprehension of vindictiveness and, concomitantly, defendants’ apprehensions that their appeals will be futile, Pearce directs us to adopt a presumption in favor of the defendants, not the sentencing judge.
Had the majority adopted a presumption for this type of situation and then proceeded to find that it had been rebutted here, we of course would be troubled given the absence of objective evidence indicating the judge’s original intentions. But at least this approach — apparently adopted by our brother Breyer in his concurrence — would have the benefit of limiting the damage. By refusing to adopt a presumption and requiring defendants to produce a smoking gun before recognizing the existence of the presumption, the majority has effectively foreclosed any possibility of defendants *20prevailing in this setting, thereby insulating, forever and completely, the actions of trial judges who, like everyone else, cannot help but fall prey on occasion to the basic human instinct of self-vindication.
For the above reasons we would vacate the increases in the defendants’ sentences on count II as violative of the defendants’ rights to due process of law.

. Bordenkircher, 434 U.S. 357, 98 S.Ct. 663, 54 L.Ed.2d 604 (1978), and Goodwin, 457 U.S. 368, 102 S.Ct. 2485, 73 L.Ed.2d 74 (1982), are also inapposite because they involved pretrial decisions. The Court has expressly distinguished between the pretrial and post-trial setting. Id. at 381, 102 S.Ct. at 2492.

. The record reveals only that the defendants were sentenced before the district judge in chambers. There is no sentencing transcript. Rather, "minutes” of the sentencing were entered on a form. Record at 194, 202. There is no indication that the sentencing judge viewed counts I and II as a single offense deserving of a cumulative sentence of ten years for Pimienta Redondo and twelve years for Pupo.

.The government asked the court to instruct the jury that count I charged an offense involving "any person on board any vessel in the high seas” possessing a controlled substance and in*19tending to distribute it, and the government asked the court to explain that count II "is possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance, aboard any vessel within the customs waters of the United States.” Record at 170 (Government’s Requested Instruction No. 16).