Court Opinion

ID: 9495636
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:07:38.634556+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:08.023673
License: Public Domain

RICHARD S. ARNOLD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. Because the District Court has increased Monroe Evans’s sentence on four counts by 30 months each, I would hold that the Court violated his due process rights as defined in North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711, 89 S.Ct. 2072, 23 L.Ed.2d 656 (1969).
Pearce established that a trial judge may not act vindictively in resentencing a criminal defendant who successfully appeals an element of his conviction. Id. at 726, 89 S.Ct. 2072. To that end, a defendant’s sentence generally may not be made more severe on remand after a successful appeal, so “whenever a judge imposes a more severe sentence upon a defendant after a new trial, the reasons for his doing so must affirmatively appear [and] be based upon objective information concerning identifiable conduct on the part of the defendant occurring after the time of the original sentencing proceeding.” Id. Thus, Pearce sets up a presumption against increasing a defendant’s sentence on remand after a successful appeal.
The dispositive question in this case is whether the District Court imposed a more severe sentence on Mr. Evans upon his resentencing on remand. I disagree with my colleagues’ conclusion that the Court did not enhance his sentence. Mr. Evans was convicted of seven counts — two counts of violating the Mann Act, one count of conspiring to violate the Mann Act, and four separate counts of money laundering. The counts of interest are the four money-laundering counts. At the initial sentencing, Mr. Evans received 24 months on each count of money laundering. Following his successful appeal, the District Court sentenced him to 54 months on each of these counts. I would hold that the Court’s increasing of each of these sentences represented a more severe sentence for Pearce purposes.
The government contends that Mr. Evans’s sentence is not more severe because his total term of incarceration remained the same — 396 months. This fact does not insulate the judge’s order, however. The government’s rationale would wholly undermine Pearce. If the District Court is free to adjust the sentences for each count against the defendant, so long as the overall sentence remains constant, then defen*336dants gain nothing from a successful appeal against sentences on individual counts. Thus, the government’s rationale creates a right to appeal that carries no consequent remedy for the defendant.
Because I consider the District Court’s decision to enhance the sentences on each of Mr. Evans’s convictions for money laundering as imposing a more severe sentence, I would find that his sentence deprives him of liberty without due process of law. Therefore, I respectfully dissent.