Court Opinion

ID: 9557635
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 16:53:43.658652+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:06:06.707428
License: Public Domain

FUENTES, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in Judge Aldisert’s well-crafted and thorough opinion. However, I write separately to note that our interpretation of U.S.S.G. § 1B1.10 implicitly rests on the assumption that there can be only one guideline range applicable to a defendant. For the reasons that follow, I am not sure that assumption is correct.
The key question in interpreting § lB1.10(a)(2)(B) is what “the defendant’s applicable guideline range” is where a defendant, subject to a statutory mandatory minimum, receives a downward departure below that minimum based on his or her substantial assistance to the government. The term “applicable” is an expansive one: the plain meaning of “to apply” is “to put to use” or “to bring into action.” Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 57 (10th ed.1996). There is no dispute that the District Court did indicate that it was using the Does’ § 5A Guidelines ranges in deciding the extent of their substantial assistance departures. Moreover, that approach was permissible under our precedent, which allows a district court to consider the seriousness of a defendant’s offense — often reflected in the § 5A Guidelines range — in determining the extent of a substantial assistance departure. See United States v. Casiano, 113 F.3d 420, 431 (3d Cir.1997).1
Therefore, the plain meaning of § 1B1.10 would suggest that John and *316Jane Doe are eligible for resentencing because their original Guidelines ranges were applied in calculating their original sentences and those ranges were subsequently lowered by the crack cocaine amendment. Such a result makes sense since the District Court might indeed have granted a greater departure had it had the benefit of the modified Guidelines ranges at the time of the original sentencing.2 Cf. United States v. McGee, 553 F.3d 225, 228 (2d Cir.2009) (“Since, from our reading of the sentencing transcript, the district court sentenced [the defendant] based on the crack cocaine guidelines and would likely have considered a different sentence from the one imposed if the applicable crack guidelines had so provided, we think that [reading § 1B1.10 to bar resentencing] would lend itself to excessive formalism.”).
Judge Aldisert, by contrast, reasons that the original Guidelines range could not have been the applicable guideline range in this ease because a mandatory minimum “subsumes and displaces the otherwise applicable guideline range” initially calculated under U.S.S.G. § 5A. United States v. Cordero, 313 F.3d 161, 166 (3d Cir.2002); see also U.S.S.G. § 5G1.1(b). However, Cordero, U.S.S.G. § 1B1.1, and § 5Gl.l(b), the authorities relied upon by the majority, describe the sentencing procedure before the consideration of a substantial assistance departure motion. U.S.S.G. § 1B1.1 and § 5Gl.l(b) direct a sentencing court to apply a mandatory minimum sentence rather than the § 5A Guidelines range if the former is greater. Yet that is not the final step of a sentencing where, as here, the District Court has brought the initial Guidelines range back into the picture in determining the extent of a downward departure from that mandatory minimum.3 Similarly, Cordero stated that a mandatory minimum sentence “subsumes and dis*317places the otherwise applicable guideline range” when § 5Gl.l(b) is applied “and thus becomes the starting point for any departure or enhancement that the sentencing court may apply in calculating the appropriate sentence under the guidelines.” 313 F.3d at 166 (emphasis added). While the mandatory minimum is therefore the “starting point” for a substantial assistance departure, Cordero says nothing as to whether the initial Guidelines range may once again become applicable in the process of determining the extent of a substantial assistance departure.
Application Note 1(A) to § 1B1.10 is likewise irrelevant here. Although it offers the example of “a statutory mandatory minimum term of imprisonment” as a provision that might operate to keep an amendment from “hav[ing] the effect of lowering the defendant’s applicable guideline range,” it does not speak to the case where the application of a statutory mandatory minimum is followed by a substantial assistance departure. See United States v. Sash, 396 F.3d 515, 523 (2d Cir. 2005) (noting that “a Guideline may apply in situations not contemplated by the background commentary to the Guideline,” and in such cases “what matters is the plain language” of the Guideline itself).
Therefore, the majority’s construction of § 1B1.10 holds only if it is read to allow for only a single “applicable guideline range” and the mandatory minimum is deemed to be that range. I ultimately concur in that interpretation, but for different reasons than those cited by the majority.
The plain language of the policy statement does suggest that the Sentencing Commission envisioned only a single applicable range given its reference to “the applicable guideline range” rather than “an” applicable range. While the use of this article might be a fairly weak sign of the Commission’s intent on its own, the provision’s wording is bolstered by a potentially reasonable justification for an approach that isolates a single “applicable guideline range.” Were § 1B1.10 read to allow resentencing any time any Guidelines range applied to a defendant was subsequently reduced by a retroactive amendment, it could open the door to resentencings where the modified range played only the most tangential role in determining the defendant’s sentence. If the Sentencing Commission’s goal was indeed to avoid that result, the best candidate for the Does’ “applicable” guideline ranges here would seem to be their mandatory minimum sentences, as Cordero does deem an applicable mandatory minimum to be the “starting point” for the substantial assistance departure.
This language is enough to prevent the application of the rule of lenity, which would require us to construe § 1B1.10 in favor of Appellants. As the Supreme Court has previously held and recently confirmed, the rule of lenity is to be invoked only in cases of “grievous ambiguity.” Huddleston v. United States, 415 U.S. 814, 831, 94 S.Ct. 1262, 39 L.Ed.2d 782 (1974) (quoted in United States v. Hayes, — U.S.-, 129 S.Ct. 1079, 1089, 172 L.Ed.2d 816 (2009)). Here, we have a specific sign of the Sentencing Commission’s possible intent in its wording of the policy statement, and may rely on that rather than a general rule of statutory construction.
Still, § lBl.lO’s wording is a frail basis for an interpretation that would produce the troubling result, verging on absurd, of allowing worse defendants a chance at reduced sentences while depriving less serious offenders of the same opportunity. For example, a defendant with a Guidelines range higher than the mandatory minimum because of an offense involving a significant quantity of crack cocaine who *318received a departure to below the minimum would be eligible for resentencing under the District Court’s understanding of § 1B1.10, whereas a defendant with an initial Guidelines range below the mandatory minimum because of an offense involving a smaller quantity of crack would not get the same opportunity even if he also received a departure to below the mandatory minimum. (Appellants’ Br. 31.) Such consequences are particularly unnecessary since the goal of confining resentencings to cases where a subsequently lowered Guidelines range played a significant role in the original sentence would be equally well-served by a different method: even if a defendant is deemed eligible for resentencing, district court judges may simply use their discretion under § lB1.10(b) to find a lower sentence unmerited where the altered Guidelines range was only remotely relevant in determining the defendant’s term of imprisonment.
Additionally, at least some of the Sentencing Commission’s staff authored a study of the consequences of applying Amendment 706 retroactively in which they assumed that defendants who had received a substantial assistance departure from a mandatory minimum would in fact be eligible for resentencing. See Glenn Schmitt et al., Analysis of the Impact of the Crack Cocaine Amendment If Made Retroactive 5-6 (2007), http://www.ussc. gov/research.htm (cited in United States v. Williams, 549 F.3d 1337, 1340 (11th Cir. 2008)). While I am unsure what weight to give this source, it does raise some questions as to how the Commission intended § 1B1.10 to be applied.
Finally, the majority does not differentiate the Does’ circumstances from those of another category of defendants whom some courts have ruled eligible for resentencing under § 1B1.10: defendants who received departures under U.S.S.G. § 4A 1.3(b) based on the sentencing judge’s determination that their classification as career offenders represented an overstatement of their criminal history. See, e.g., McGee, 553 F.3d 225; United States v. Poindexter, 550 F.Supp.2d 578 (E.D.Pa. 2008); United States v. Ragland, 568 F.Supp.2d 19 (D.D.C.2008); see also U.S.S.G. § 1B1.1 cmt. n. 1 (describing both types of departures as methods for imposing sentences “outside the applicable guideline range”). In both circumstances, the mandated sentence is deemed inappropriate and the initial Guidelines range may play a role in determining the proper sentence, rendering it an “applicable” range.
Given these considerations, I express some discomfort with our interpretation of § 1B1.10. While its language barely favors the majority’s interpretation, I am unsure whether our reading of the policy statement truly reflects the intent of its drafters. Therefore, while I concur with my colleagues’ ultimate conclusion that John and Jane Doe are ineligible for resentencing, further guidance from the Sentencing Commission on this question would not go amiss.

. We are alone in this approach; all other circuits to have addressed the issue have held *316that the maximum extent of a substantial assistance departure may be based only on the defendant's substantial assistance. See United States v. Desselle, 450 F.3d 179, 182 & n. 1 (5th Cir.2006) (and cases cited therein) (holding that the magnitude of a substantial assistance departure may reflect only "assistance-related concerns”). Accordingly, other circuits have held defendants like the Does to be ineligible for resentencing because their original Guidelines ranges cannot be applied in determining the size of a substantial assistance departure. See, e.g., United States v. Williams, 551 F.3d 182 (2d Cir.2009) (refusing to allow the resentencing of a defendant under § IB 1.10 where the defendant had received a substantial assistance departure from a mandatory minimum sentence). However, that divergence in the application of § IB 1.10 is simply the inevitable result of a difference in our sentencing doctrine. See United States v. McGee, 553 F.3d 225, 228 n. 2 (2d Cir. 2009) (acknowledging that the holding in Williams was predicated on the Second Circuit's rule that the maximum extent of a substantial assistance departure may not take into account anything besides the defendant's substantial assistance to the government).

. The applicability of a sentencing range other than the mandatory minimum is even more noticeable in the not uncommon circumstance where a district court specifically departs by a certain number of offense levels.

. Notably, § 5Gl.l(b) actually refers to the initial sentence calculated under § 5A as "the applicable guideline range.” While this by no means indicates that the initial Guidelines range remains "applicable” if a sentencing judge applies a mandatory minimum and stops there, it does suggest that "applicable guideline range” is meant to be descriptive of the reality of the sentencing process rather than a formal term referring to the range that results after the application of § IB 1.1(h). The "applicable guideline range” may evolve as the sentencing proceeds: prior to the steps described in § IB 1.1(h) it is the § 5A range, after § IB 1.1(h) is followed it may be a mandatory minimum, but after the calculation of applicable departures under § lBl.l(i) the term may expand to include a range that is in fact part of the process of granting a departure.