Court Opinion

ID: 9498085
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:07:46.330356+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:36.680476
License: Public Domain

WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Because I believe we should order a limited remand of Patrick Stewart’s sentence pursuant to United States v. Paladino, 401 F.3d 471, 483-84 (7th Cir.2005) to ask the sentencing judge whether he would have given a shorter sentence had he known the Guidelines were only advisory, I respectfully dissent. I concur in the determination that the jury instructions were not erroneous.
Although the sentencing judge departed upward, the judge did not sentence Stewart to the high end of the elevated Guidelines range. Nor did he make any statement indicating that he would have sentenced Stewart to a higher sentence had he known the Guidelines were merely advisory. Thus, it is not clear that the sentencing judge would have given the same sentence had the sentencing taken place post -Booker.
Stewart was sentenced under the then-mandatory guidelines scheme. The sentencing judge departed upward five levels based on his finding that Stewart threatened five groups of persons, and he also increased Stewart’s criminal history category from category I to category IV. In making the decision to depart upward five levels, the district court judge stated, after concluding that Stewart had threatened five different groups, “I think that an increase in offense level of one level for each of those groups is appropriate.”
In addition, although Stewart’s history initially placed him in criminal history category I, the district judge invoked *830U.S.S.G. § 4A1.3 and placed him in category IV. When Stewart was sentenced, § 4A1.3 stated in part:
If reliable information indicates that the criminal history category does not adequately reflect the seriousness of the defendant’s past criminal conduct or the likelihood that the defendant will commit other crimes, the court may consider imposing a sentence departing from the otherwise applicable guideline range.
In explaining his decision to place Stewart in category IV, the judge stated, “Based on the court’s experience in applying the sentencing guidelines to other offenders, the court finds that the near certainty of future threats that Mr. Stewart presents is (at best) akin to the risk posed by category IV offenders.”1
Because Stewart did not raise a Sixth Amendment or related challenge before the district court, our review of his Booker challenge is for plain error. The mandatory application of the Guidelines in setting Stewart’s sentence constitutes error that is plain. See United States v. White, 406 F.3d 827, 835 (7th Cir.2005); United States v. Castillo, 406 F.3d 806, 823 (7th Cir.2005). Furthermore, if a defendant has been prejudiced by an illegal sentence, then allowing that illegal sentence to stand would constitute a miscarriage of justice. See Paladino, 401 F.3d at 483.
Our plain error inquiry also asks whether the district court, operating under the discretion permitted by Booker, might have sentenced Stewart any differently. Paladino, 401 F.3d at 483-84. The majority concludes that “[i]t is clear that the judge would not have given a lower sentence had the sentencing taken place post-Booker, so there is no plain error.” Majority Op. at 829. In my view, that conclusion is not so clear.
The district court sentenced Stewart to 64 months’ imprisonment. Significantly, this term was not at the high end of the guideline range the district court deemed applicable. Rather, 64 months rests at the middle of the 57 to 71 month range. Also, the district court judge did not make any comments indicating he would have sentenced higher had he known the Guidelines were only advisory — indeed, the sentence was in the middle of the range, and the judge could have sentenced higher while still remaining within the Guideline range.
The term of 64 months also does not reflect either a statutory maximum or minimum. My colleagues note that Stewart’s sentence is lower than the statutory maximum, but I fail to see how the fact that a sentence is lower than a statutory maximum supports a conclusion that the district court would not have given a lower sentence had he known the Guidelines were advisory. Cf. United States v. Lee, 399 F.3d 864, 867 (7th Cir.2005) (affirming sentence imposed at statutory maximum, where district court judge indicated it would have preferred to sentence higher); Paladino, 401 F.3d at 482-83 (noting that when sentence imposed at statutory minimum, this court can be confident a higher sentence would not have been imposed had sentencing judge known guidelines were advisory).
Also, although the district court judge departed upward from the Guideline range, both departures were tied to the *831Guidelines (“an increase in offense level of one level for each of those groups”; “the near certainty of future threats that Mr. Stewart presents is (at best) akin to the risk posed by category IV offenders”). As this court stated in Lee, in the paragraph after that quoted by my colleagues:
Sometimes district judges depart by reference to the Guideline range. For example, a judge may say or imply something like: “your crime and background are 10% less serious than the norm, so I am departing by two levels from the Guideline range.” Such a connection, expressed or inferred from other events, would suggest that additional leeway might have affected the sentence and would justify a remand under Paladino to learn the district court’s disposition.
Lee, 399 F.3d at 867. Here, the district court’s departures were tied to the Guidelines, and Stewart’s resulting sentence was thus dependent on their mandatory nature.
In short, I do not believe we can be sure that the sentencing judge would impose the same sentence under the now-advisory scheme, especially where the sentence was, in the district court’s words, at “the center of the range.” (Sent. Tr. at 132.) We recently considered and rejected an argument that a district court’s upward departure obviates the need for a remand, and our analysis there is instructive here:
[The sentencing judge] raised the guidelines range ... by granting an upward departure, and then sentenced the defendant near the top of the elevated range. But as we pointed out in Paladi-no, a sentencing decision by a judge who thinks herself bound by the guidelines will be, if the judge is conscientious, a sentence relative to the guidelines. The judge will compare the defendant with the average offender in the different guideline ranges, without necessarily agreeing that the ranges are correct. Also, with the guidelines merely advisory the judge can take into account mitigating factors that the guidelines ignored, provided that in doing so she is acting “reasonably.” United States v. Booker, supra, 125 S.Ct. at 765; United States v. Paladino, supra, 401 F.3d at 484. We cannot be sure that [the sentencing judge] would again sentence Scott to 120 months, now that the guidelines are merely advisory.
United States v. Scott, 405 F.3d 615, 617 (7th Cir.2005); cf. United States v. Cunningham, 405 F.3d 497, 505 (7th Cir.2005) (declining to grant Paladino remand where district court departed upward, sentenced at top of elevated guidelines range, and made comments including that the defendant came “before the court with no substantial prior criminal history at all, [and fell] within Criminal History Category I ... a factor that work[ed] greatly [to Cunningham’s] benefit, [but that] otherwise [the court would] be getting up to the statutory maximum in no time at all ....”).
I respectfully dissent.

. Stewart also contested the district court’s decision to depart upward from criminal history category I to category IV. Although there may have been a basis to depart, I also question whether the district court's "experience” alone constituted adequate justification for the extent of the departure under the then-mandatory guidelines scheme, as it does not adequately explain why Stewart is more similar to a category IV offender than to one in any other category. See United States v. Angle, 315 F.3d 810, 813 (7th Cir.2003); United States v. Tai, 994 F.2d 1204, 1214 (7th Cir. 1993).