Court Opinion

ID: 9498992
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:34:48.249999+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:13.067918
License: Public Domain

BOYCE F. MARTIN, JR., Circuit Judge, dissenting.
In the district court’s own words, “[t]he history of this case is indelibly etched in the court’s memory.” This case too will forever be etched in my mind as one of the most fundamentally unfair results that I have ever witnessed in thirty-plus years as a judge.
I.
Lummie Sanders was arrested and charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm. The presentence report states that
on November 24, 1992, the defendant personally pawned the shotgun described in the indictment at Silver Hardware and Loan. Since he had prior felony convictions, his actions constituted an illegal possession of the firearm. On November 30th, he regained physical possession of the shotgun by paying off the loan; but, in the process of recovering the shotgun, he falsely indicated on ATF Form 4473 that he had no previous felony record. Then, on December 10, 1992, the defendant once again pawned the same shotgun at the same store, constituting a second occasion of illegal possession of the firearm.1
*584Sanders was arrested and entered a plea of not guilty. Following the plea of not guilty, the government filed a notice of its intent to seek an enhanced sentence under the Armed Career Criminal Act, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e), which provides for a fifteen year mandatory minimum sentence.
The jury found Sanders guilty, and at sentencing, Sanders challenged the validity of his prior convictions. The district court found a prior assault conviction to be constitutionally invalid and refused to impose the mandatory minimum fifteen year sentence. Instead, the district court sentenced Sanders to thirty-seven months imprisonment. The district court took note of the defendant’s family situation as described in the presentence report. The report stated that the defendant had nine children, three of whom were adults and had moved out of the home, but six of whom the defendant was currently raising. The report stated that Sanders did not “know who will care for his children if he is incarcerated. He said that their mother is in no condition to care for them.” The district court found that Sanders was living with and providing for his minor children, which was “totally out of the mainstream.” On appeal, this Court reversed and held that the prior assault conviction should have been counted by the district court. United States v. Sanders, 1994 WL 714377 (6th Cir.1994) (unpublished). We remanded, however, for consideration as to whether Sanders’s prior conviction for involuntary manslaughter ought to be considered an ACCA predicate conviction.
On remand, the district court determined that Sanders’s prior conviction for involuntary manslaughter was a violent felony for purposes of the enhanced sentence and therefore sentenced Sanders to 188 months imprisonment. On appeal, this Court again reversed, holding that the district court erred by not considering a downward departure to the minimum sentence of 180 months. United States v. Sanders, 97 F.3d 856 (6th Cir.1996). The district court then reduced Sanders’s sentence to 180 months imprisonment.
On August 1, 1997, Sanders filed a motion to vacate his conviction and sentence under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, once again attacking his prior assault conviction. On April 10, 1998, the district court agreed with Sanders and vacated the fifteen year sentence. Sanders v. United States, 8 F.Supp.2d 674 (N.D.Ohio 1998). The court then resentenced Sanders to the original term of imprisonment of thirty-seven months and ordered him released from custody on April 24, 1998.
This is where things got interesting. Although he was released from prison, Sanders began a two-year reporting requirement with the Probation Department for the Northern District of Ohio. During this time, the department made regular home and job visits to monitor Sanders’s progress. Also during this time, Sanders had regular drugs tests — sixteen of them — all of which were negative. Two years later this Court reversed the district court’s grant of habeas relief. Sanders v. United States, 1999 WL 591455 (6th Cir.1999) (unpublished). The Supreme Court denied certiorari on March 20, 2000.
On April 23, 2000, however, the Probation Department sent Sanders a “Notice of Discharge” letter which informed him that “inasmuch as you completed service of your sentence ... you are hereby discharged from supervision of this office on the above sentence.” The department ob*585viously had knowledge of Sanders’s home address and place of employment.
For the next fourteen months the government did nothing to advance resentenc-ing. It was not until June 21, 2001, that the government sought to advance the case for resentencing pursuant to this Court’s mandate. Counsel was appointed for Sanders on October 2. On October 29, counsel argued that it would be unconstitutional to resentence Sanders and also informed the court that he had been unable to locate his client. Thus, Sanders had not been informed of this Court’s reversal or of the government’s fourteen-month delay in advancing the case. A month later, the government replied and “respectfully requested” that a warrant be issued to locate Sanders. No further action was taken by anyone for about the next nineteen months or approximately five hundred and fifty days. Then, on June 6, 2003, the government renewed its request that the district court issue a warrant for Sanders’s arrest. By this point, Sanders had been out of prison for five years and two months with the belief that he was a free man and with no remaining debt to society and no information to the contrary.
After June 6, nothing happened again for more than six months. It was not until December 12, 2003 that the district court issued a warrant and Sanders was taken into custody on December 22. On the 23rd, Sanders was released on bond after it was clarified that he had been living openly at a fixed residence in the Cleveland area, had no violations of probation or the law, had been discharged by the probation department, and informed that he had completed service of his sentence.
On February 10, 2004, Sanders filed a response to the government’s motion for sentencing and requested an evidentiary hearing and oral argument. The government filed a response on March 9. The district court did not take any action. On October 22, 2004, nearly a year since Sanders’s re-arrest, the government filed a mandamus action in this Court seeking to compel the district court to return Sanders to prison, six years after his release, to complete the remainder of the sentence. Approximately eleven years remained on the sentence. One month later, the district court entered an order rejecting Sanders’s arguments and directing Sanders to self-surrender for the purpose of completing the balance of the sentence.
The district court also filed, on the same date, its Answer of David D. Dowd, Jr., in the pending mandamus action. In his response, Judge Dowd recounted the history of the case, which he stated “is indelibly etched in the court’s memory.” Judge Dowd conceded his reluctance to “address the issue because of my strong belief that the sending of the defendant back to prison under all the circumstances of this case is unwarranted.” Judge Dowd further commented that his belief that the prior conviction should not count, “coupled with the defendant’s commitment to his five children back in 1993, gives rise to my disagreement with the exercise of the prosecutorial discretion to seek a sentence of 180 months where the weapon was not used in the commission of a separate crime.” Judge Dowd stated that he is a strong believer in prosecutorial discretion, but suggested that the decision to seek an enhanced sentence in this case was made only
after the defendant was arraigned and entered a plea of not guilty. The provisions of the statute give the prosecutor enormous bargaining power. The power seems to be exercised with respect to defendants who do not immediately enter pleas of guilty ... So my concern about the exercise of prosecutorial dis*586cretion in this case rests primarily upon the obvious, enormous disparity in the sentencing consequences of Sanders’fs] decision to contest the charges.
Judge Dowd stated that he accepted “[t]he stark reality ... that I am required to order Sanders to return to prison.... I have concluded that I am left with no alternative, short of retirement or recusal, other than to direct Lummie Sanders to return to prison.” (Judge Dowd, a respected jurist, further stated that “[a]l-though I have seriously considered the alternatives of both retirement and recusal as a way of escaping the incredibly distasteful task of telling the defendant that he must return to prison, these alternatives would simply transfer the onerous task to another judge of this court. The court has too much respect and admiration for the difficult tasks the other judges of this court face to shift the responsibility to another judge.”) Judge Dowd then explained his “strong support” for a presidential pardon for Lummie Sanders and opined that Sanders’s case is an exceptional one justifying such relief. To further that process, Judge Dowd decided to “forward a copy of this Answer, with its Appendices, to the Office of the President of the United States and also Senators Mike DeWine and George Voinovich, and to Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones for their information and for whatever course of action, if any, they may wish to take separately or collectively in this case.”
II.
Now on appeal, Sanders argues that reimposing the sentence more than six years (or nearly 2,200 days) of freedom and operating under the belief — as he was told as much by the government — that he was a free man, would violate his rights under the Due Process Clause. There is ease law strongly supporting his position.
DeWitt v. Ventetoulo, 6 F.3d 32 (1st Cir.1993) is the leading case in this area of due process questions. The question in the case was whether the state of Rhode Island had acted “unconstitutionally in increasing DeWitt’s sentence and reimpri-soning him after his release on parole.” Id. at 32. DeWitt had been sentenced to life imprisonment in 1978. In 1981, however, “DeWitt came to the aid of a prison guard who was being assaulted by an inmate.” Id. at 33. The state court then suspended all but fifteen years of DeWitt’s life sentence and DeWitt served six more years before his parole application was granted. Id. Prior to DeWitt’s release, however, in 1983, the Rhode Island Supreme Court held, in a different case, that a superior court could not “suspend” a sentence once the defendant began serving it. See id. Between this time and 1987 when DeWitt was paroled, the state made no effort to have the superior court correct its error in DeWitt’s case. Id. Despite the 1983 ruling, DeWitt was paroled in 1987 “as if the order suspending his sentence in part was still in force.” Id.
“During the eight months following his release in January 1987, DeWitt obtained work, beginning a painting business and then a siding business. He resumed his relationship with family members and his girlfriend.” Id. In September, however, DeWitt was involved in an altercation which led to criminal charges, the result of which was the superior court’s decision to vacate its 1981 ruling, leaving DeWitt’s life sentence in place. Id. DeWitt was reincar-cerated and sought relief in federal court. The district court, relying on Breest v. Helgemoe, 579 F.2d 95 (1978), granted De-Witt relief finding that the state’s decision to reimpose the life sentence violated De-Witt’s due process rights.
The First Circuit affirmed following a lengthy analysis. First, the court noted *587that “[tjhe Constitution contains no general rule that prohibits a court from increasing an earlier sentence where the court finds that it was erroneous and that a higher sentence was required by law.” Id. at 34. “But,” according to the court, “in law what is true for the usual case is often not true in the extreme case.” Id. (noting that “[ejven the state conceded at oral argument that due process must impose some outer limit on the power to revise sentences upward after the fact”). Citing Breest, the court noted that “[a] convicted defendant does not automatically acquire a vested interest in a mistakenly low sentence. Only in the extreme ease can a court properly say that the later upward revision of a sentence, made to correct an earlier mistake, is so unfair that it must be deemed inconsistent with fundamental notions of fairness embodied in the Due Process Clause.” Id. at 35.
Recognizing that “there is no single touchstone for making this judgment, nor any multi-part formula,” the court determined that
attention must be given ... to the lapse of time between the mistake and the attempted increase in sentence, to whether or not the defendant contributed to the mistake and the reasonableness of his intervening expectations, to the prejudice worked by a later change, and to the diligence exercised by the state in seeking the change.
Id. Here, the court found that the state was not diligent in seeking to correct the error of the suspended sentence. Id. Moreover, the court found that “circumstances changed substantially.” Id. Specifically, the court found that DeWitt spent six years in prison with the belief that he was near parole and more importantly, found that DeWitt was actually released from prison. Id. Additionally, the court found that DeWitt had spent eight months released in society, had “laid down new roots,” acquired a job and reestablished family ties. Id. The court found that this “lengthy delay and change of circumstances are not decisive but they contribute to the judgment.” Id.
The court then held that “due process must in principle impose an outer limit on the ability to correct a sentence after the event.” Id. at 36. Realizing, as I do here, that the problem is one of “deciding how much is too much,” the court concluded that DeWitt’s circumstances crossed the line into the unconstitutional by focusing on “a range of considerations.” Id. The court focused on
the multi-year period between the suspension and the reimposition of sentence, the reasonableness of DeWitt’s reliance, his release from prison and formation of new roots, the unusual tardiness of the state in failing to correct the error from 1983 onward, and the existence of an alternative parole revocation remedy. These elements cannot be calibrated precisely, nor can they be taken in isolation. The outcome here is the result of the combined weight of the elements.
Id. In conclusion, the court stated:
We reach our conclusion here with diffidence because federal judges have no monopoly on wisdom in decision what is unfair, and even harsh decisions by state authorities usually raise no constitutional issue. But we are confident that this case is very unusual and that our decision imposes no serious constraint on state authorities who, unlike federal judges, have the direct responsibility for law-enforcement and prosecutorial tasks at hand. In sum, this case is the very rare exception to the general rule that courts can, after sentence, revise sentences upward to correct errors.

Id.

Likewise, the Fourth Circuit has held that “due process may also be denied when *588a sentence is enhanced after the defendant has served so much of his sentence that his expectations as to its finality have crystallized and it would be fundamentally unfair to defeat them.” United States v. Lundien, 769 F.2d 981, 987 (4th Cir.1985). The Third Circuit has also recognized this principle. United States v. Davis, 112 F.3d 118, 123 (3d Cir.1997) (quoting Lun-dien and stating that a due process violation will be found “in an extreme case that a later upward revision of a sentence is so unfair that it is inconsistent with the fundamental notions of fairness”). So has the Eleventh Circuit. United States v. Davis, 329 F.3d 1250, 1255 (11th Cir.2003) (“A defendant’s due process rights may be violated when a sentence is enhanced after the defendant has served so much of his sentence that his expectations as to finality have crystallized and it would be fundamentally unfair to defeat them.”). The majority fails to distinguish DeWitt, which I believe should dictate a finding in favor of Sanders in this case.
Even more unfortunate is the fact that the majority does not cite or consider this Court’s prior unpublished decision wherein we adopted DeWitt as the standard for reviewing this type of claim. The unpublished disposition from this Court, if followed, would also lead to a finding in favor of Sanders. In United States v. Mayes, 162 F.3d 1162 (6th Cir.1998) (unpublished), a unanimous panel held that it was a due process violation to reimpose a sentence five years after it was erroneously recorded as suspended. Mayes had pleaded guilty to criminal charges leading to a sentencing guideline range of 33-41 months. Id. at *1. Mayes, however, provided substantial assistance to the authorities and the government moved for a downward departure and agreed on a recommended sentence of six months in a halfway house followed by two years of supervised release. Id. When the judgment was filed in 1992, it erroneously stated “IMPOSITION OF SENTENCE SUSPENDED” and also stated that Mayes was to self-surrender “as notified by the Clerk’s Office.” Id. The Clerk’s office never notified Mayes and he never went to the halfway house. As this Court noted, “it was well established at the time of Mayes’s sentence that a district court had no authority to suspend a sentence, as the term is commonly understood.” Id. (citation omitted).
At any rate, Mayes sat pretty, undisturbed by the law. After two years, Mayes moved to Florida where he began working in the secondary-mortgage business. Mayes then returned to Memphis and began his own secondary-mortgage business. He has been extremely successful and his company now employs scores of people. While Mayes’s partner runs the business day to day, Mayes is in charge of sales and marketing, a job that entails extensive travel to trade shows. Mayes claims that he is presently the only person in the company qualified to perform this function.
Id. at *2. In 1997 the sentencing judge retired and the case was assigned to another judge, who, in reviewing the records, noticed the error in the judgment. Id. The district court then issued a sua sponte order removing the suspension language resulting in the reiteration of the sentence of six months in the halfway house. Id.
On appeal, Mayes claimed that the reim-position of the sentence violated his due process rights and this Court agreed. We stated: “This leaves the core due-process question: Was it too late for the district court to reiterate Mayes’s sentence, such that doing so was fundamentally unfair?” Id. at *4. After citing and discussing De-Witt, this Court stated that “[although we do not purport to establish a rigid multi-*589factor test, since this is a fact-bound inquiry that requires a nuanced and case-specific analysis,” the DeWitt “factors are useful for analyzing Mayes’s case.” Id. In its analysis the Court stated: “First, the five-year span between iteration and reiteration of Mayes’s sentence is problematic. Second, Mayes did not contribute at all to the original error here.” Id. We found that Mayes’s “expectations were not wholly reasonable, [but] they were still reasonable enough.” Id. “Third,” the Court found, “the prejudice faced by Mayes is harsh, though not as harsh as if he were being sent to prison (or, a fortiori, being-sent back to prison like DeWitt).” Id. at *5 (emphasis in original).2 Finally, the Court found that “the government ... has displayed a total lack of diligence in pursuing this matter.” Id. In sum, “[a]ll of these factors work to some degree in Mayes’s favor. We hold that the district court’s action produced a fundamentally unfair result, and that Mayes’s due-process rights were violated by the district court’s actions.” Id.
The Court continued discussing the issues and noted that “the multiplicity of fact patterns and considerations convinces us that there are no ready bright-line rules that we can use to solve this case.” Id. In so concluding, this Court rejected the 9th Circuit’s view in People v. Materne, 72 F.3d 103, 107 (9th Cir.1995) that “there can be no reasonable expectation of finality as to sentences that are illegal.” This Court concluded that
[u]nder this view, the fact that there was no basis for the original district court to suspend Mayes’s sentence would mean that Mayes could have no expectation of finality. We are unable to agree with such a bright-line rule, and even if we did agree, this expectation of finality would have to be balanced against other factors. We agree, however, that in ordinary circumstances the illegality of a sentence is a weighty factor to consider, and that this makes us reluctant to eliminate Mayes’s sentence altogether.
Id. The Court, therefore, remanded the case for the district court to consider “whether some sort of intermediate sentence or mitigated arrangement is appropriate.” Id. at' *6.
III.
The basic principle, it seems, is that “the power of a sentencing court to correct even a statutorily invalid sentence must be subject to some temporal limit.” Breest v. Helgemoe, 579 F.2d 95, 101 (1st Cir.1978). Thus, “[a]fter a substantial period of time, therefore, it might be fundamentally unfair, and thus violative of due process for a court to alter even an illegal sentence in a way which frustrates the prisoner’s expectations.” Id.; see also Lundien, 769 F.2d at 987 (“[D]ue process may also be denied when a sentence is enhanced after the defendant has served so much of his sentence that his expectations as to its finality have crystallized and it would be fundamentally unfair to defeat them.”). And, the First and Fourth Circuits were discussing prisoners still currently incarcerated when their sentences are enhanced.3 *590Lummie Sanders had been living as a free man for six and a half years.
In any event, I would follow the lead of the First Circuit and this Court in Mayes and look at all of the facts and circumstances and also loosely apply the multi-factor test. I find it troubling that the majority did not cite or consider our decision in Mayes. Although the case is an unpublished disposition, it was issued by a unanimous panel adopting an analysis that would be directly applicable here. In any event, once again, the First Circuit in De-Witt found that “attention must be given ... to the lapse of time between the mistake and the attempted increase in sentence, to whether or not the defendant contributed to the mistake and the reasonableness of his intervening expectations, to the prejudice worked by a later change, and to the diligence exercised by the state in seeking the change.” DeWitt, 6 F.3d at 35. Likewise, in Mayes, this Court, in answering “the core due-process question: Was it too late for the district court to reiterate [the defendant]^ sentence, such that doing so was fundamentally unfair,” we found the DeWitt factors to be useful.
The first factor is “the lapse of time between the mistake and the attempted increase in sentence.” DeWitt, 6 F.3d at 35 (finding the delay from when DeWitt was released from prison in January 1987 to September 1987 when he was rearrested, a delay of six months, to be “lengthy”). In Mayes, this Court found “the five-year span between iteration and reiteration of [the defendant]^ sentence [ ] problematic.” 162 F.3d 1162, *4. In this case, the time span is more than six years — longer than the time span in Mayes. I think this six year lapse of time is also “problematic.”
The second factor is “whether or not the defendant contributed to the mistake and the reasonableness of his intervening expectations.” DeWitt, 6 F.3d at 35. As this Court found in Mayes, Sanders too “did not contribute at all” to the errors committed here. Mayes, 162 F.3d 1162, *4. In Mayes, this Court found that Mayes’s “expectations were not wholly reasonable, [but] they were still reasonable enough.” Id. Mayes had received conflicting information — both that his sentence was suspended, but also that he would be notified by the clerk’s office to report to the halfway house to serve his sentence. Mayes was never notified and never brought the error to the attention of the Court. I would not suggest that Sanders’s expectations were one hundred percent reasonable, but they come pretty close, and are far more reasonable than those accepted by this Court in Mayes. Sanders was released from prison. He completed two years of supervised release. He was notified by the federal government that his supervised release was completed and his service of his sentence was finished. Sanders awoke over the course, of two thousand mornings without any information to the contrary. Sanders had no conflicting information like Mayes.
The third factor is “the prejudice worked by a later change.” DeWitt, 6 F.3d at 35. In Mayes, where the reiterated sentence would have required Mayes to report to a halfway house for six months, this Court found that “the prejudice faced *591by Mayes is harsh, though not as harsh as if he were being sent to prison (or, a fortiori, being sent back to prison like DeWitt).” 162 F.3d 1162, *5 (emphasis in original). Thus, the prejudice here is far ivorse than in Mayes. Sanders would be sent back to prison — and not for some short six month term, but rather nearly eleven years — which this Court has already stated was harsher than what Mayes would have to endure. Furthermore, the prejudice to Sanders cannot be fully appreciated without reference to what he did with his settled and crystalized expectations that his incarceration was finished.
Sanders was released from custody on April 28, 1998. He immediately sought out a residence in Cleveland and reported this address to the Probation Department. He secured employment though Area Temp Services and on April 30, two days after his release, was hired at Aleo Molding Co., making molds for trains and airplane parts. He remained employed there for six months making $10 per hour. His employment was terminated when he suffered a broken arm while working a machine. After approximately six months, he returned to work on modified duty doing light industrial and clerical work at The Reserves Network in Cleveland. During this same time period, Sanders also worked a second job as an evening cook at Jacobs Field. Area Temps also sent him to other short time positions.
Sanders purchased and registered an automobile. He registered to vote and has voted in every election since his release. In May 1998, Sanders joined the New Bethlehem Baptist Church in Cleveland and served as an usher until his re-arrest. Sanders also reunited his family upon release in 1998. During his incarceration several of his children became involved in drug activity. He became actively involved in his children’s lives, encouraged them to find employment with Area Temps and met with and counseled his children on a regular basis — all of whom are now drug free, employed, and members of his church.
Sanders also reestablished a relationship with his thirteen-plus grandchildren. He also became romantically involved with another church member, Shalonda Ellison, and, on March 6, 2003, after three years of dating, they married. Shalonda has two daughters of her own who were being raised by their grandparents. Sanders also began a relationship with Shalonda’s daughters.
As part of his commitment to his family — which Judge Dowd was aware of in 1993 — every weekend Sanders had all of his grandchildren to his house to stay with him. Sanders also began to include Shal-onda’s family and this established strong familial bonds between the families. Sanders and Shalonda also enrolled and attended parenting classes sponsored by Child Services at the Family Health of Beech-Brook program, at the Carl B. Stokes building in Cleveland. Sanders also has asserted that Shalonda was pregnant at the time of his re-arrest on December 23, 2003, and that she miscarried that night.
In January 1999, Sanders secured full-time employment as a Service Technician, at the Longwood Estates, through the Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority. He remained employed there for two years. On May 30, 2001, Sanders joined Labors International Union of North America, Local 860, Construction Member # 3879113. He worked for Local 860 through December 2002 when he was involved in a serious work related accident while working construction at Kokosing Construction Co. Sanders was hit with a piece of iron and lost his right eye. He was unable to work in 2003 due to the *592injury and was placed on Social Security Disability.
On March 17, 2003, Sanders was able to completely pay off all past due child support obligations to the Cuyahoga Support Enforcement Agency. And, on a regular basis, approximately once per week, Sanders would accompany his brother, Charles Sanders, a Deacon with the Deacon Christian Fellowship Mission, in Cleveland, to minister and counsel to inner city children. The First Circuit in DeWitt focused on the “new roots in society, acquiring a job and reestablishing family ties” during the eight months during which DeWitt was released from prison. DeWitt, 6 F.3d at 35. Sanders, of course, laid new roots in society, acquired a job, and reestablished family ties, during the six years during which he was released.4
Sanders, it appears, made quite a life for himself. He exemplified rehabilitation at its best. The prejudice in this case is unfathomable.
The fourth factor is “the diligence exercised by the state in seeking the change.” DeWitt, 6 F.3d at 35. In Mayes, this Court found that the government displayed a “total lack of diligence” in pursuing the matter. 162 F.3d 1162, *5. Such is the case here as well. The prosecutor seeks to blame the district court, but in my opinion, both are at fault. Moreover, it does not matter from the due process perspective which branch of the government is at fault if Sanders’s due process rights are violated. See Mayes, 162 F.3d 1162, *5 (“We hold that the district court’s actions produced a fundamentally unfair result, and that Mayes’s due process rights were violated by the district court’s actions.” (emphasis added)). Thus, it does not matter whether the prosecutor or the district court or both produced the fundamentally unfair result — because it is the result that matters. I would therefore reject the prosecutor’s attempt at playing the blame game. And, in any event, both the prosecutor and the district court are at fault. The district court admitted its reluctance to send Sanders back to prison. Following this Court’s reversal of the district court’s grant of habeas relief, the federal government’s probation department sent Sanders a notice of discharge, which, it is clear, was incorrect. Even more troubling is the fact that for the next fourteen months the prosecution did nothing. Even more troubling than that is that following the government’s eventual re*593quest that Sanders be arrested, nobody did anything for nineteen more months— or, approximately five hundred and fifty days. By the time the government renewed its request that Sanders be arrested, he had then been out of prison for five years and two months. These lengthy delays — fourteen months and nineteen months respectively — demonstrate a lack of diligence on the part of the government. Following the government’s renewed request, the district court did not act again for another six months (albeit due to reluctance rather than diligence). After Sanders was arrested and papers were filed, the district court did nothing again for six more months with nearly another year passing from the time of the arrest to the time the district court acted again. I would therefore, find that the district court’s actions in reimposing Sanders’s sentence “produced a fundamentally unfair result, and that [Sandersl’s due process rights were violated by the district court’s actions.” Mayes, 162 F.3d 1162, *5.
By applying this four prong test, all of the factors weigh heavily in favor of Sanders and they all indicate that a due process violation has occurred. This Court continued the analysis in Mayes, however, by acknowledging that it still must consider the fact that the mistaken sentence was illegal. Id. (“We agree, however, that in ordinary circumstances the illegality of a sentence is a weighty factor to consider.”). The Court determined, therefore, that the expectation of finality would have to be balanced against the sentence’s illegality. Still, the Court found that Mayes’s expectation of finality outweighed the illegality of the sentence. With all of the factors above weighing even more heavily in the direction of a fundamentally unfair result and due process violation, I would reach the same conclusion in Sanders’s case.
IV.
When I think about this case, as I have done so often as of late, it makes me sick to my stomach. To imagine the emotional and psychological turmoil Mr. Sanders has been forced to endure as a result of the government’s action and inaction in this case shocks and angers me to no end. Sanders woke up every day for six years believing that he was a free man. That’s 2,190 mornings. And, in this case, it appears that Lummie Sanders used each of those days to make something out of his life. I cannot imagine any more settled expectations than those. I would order Sanders released from prison immediately. If we as a federal court cannot remedy the truly fundamentally unfair result that exists here, I don’t know what good we are. And the law, well, if the law truly requires Lummie Sanders to go back to prison — the law is a ass.5

. In its response to the mandamus action, the district court noted that "[t]he weapon was not used in a separate crime as is often the case. In other words, as is frequently the *584case with prosecutions of a felon in possession, no crime of violence was associated with the criminal conduct.”

. The Court did note that “Mayes's changed circumstances — his new success in life — add nothing to our calculus. A poorer man of equal scruples should face an identical chance of having his sentence reiterated. If Mayes's success in life means that other people depend on him for their livelihood, the executive branch of the government is fully equipped to consider this factor in deciding how and whether to pursue Mayes.” Id. at *5.

. As the First Circuit noted, "[w]hen a prisoner first commences to serve his sentence, especially if it involves a long prison term as here, the prospect of release on parole or otherwise may seem but a dimly perceived, *590largely unreal hope. As the months and years pass, however, the date of that prospect must assume a real and psychologically critical importance. The prisoner may be aided in enduring his confinement and coping with the prison regime by the knowledge that with good behavior release on parole or release outright will be achieved on a date certain.” Id. at 101. In Breest, the court found, however, that the trial court's increase of a sentence from eighteen to forty years after the defendant had served fourteen days to be "permissible.” Id.

. The district court made a very interesting point in its answer to the mandamus action which I would be remiss in not addressing. The district court discussed the United States Department of Justice policy of considering “collateral consequences” when deciding whether to indict corporations. Judge Dowd commented on a lecture he attended where the former Deputy Attorney General “indicated that he had considered 'collateral consequences’ in his decision not to seek an indictment of the corporations Enron and WorldCom because of the 'collateral consequences' to the shareholders and other entities that would have been adversely affected, in his opinion.” Judge Dowd stated that “collateral consequences” appears to be "a concept limited to corporations and not individuals.”
This case presents an example of how bizarre and inhumane such a policy is. Apparently the prosecutor did not give a second thought to what would happen "to the shareholders and other entities that would have been adversely affected” in Lummie Sanders’s life. Apparently considerations such as these are a blessing bestowed upon corporations but not individuals and families. So, too bad so sad for Eric, Nicole, Ronald, Carmen, Kim, Shelly, Lummie, Cedric, Malanie. This case begs the question whether prosecutors are really deserving of the discretion they are afforded. "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachments by men of zeal, well-meaning, but without understanding.” Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 48 S.Ct. 564, 573, 72 L.Ed. 944 (1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting).

. Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist 520 (Dodd, Mead & Co.1941) (1838).