Court Opinion

ID: 9499341
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:45:11.365239+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:26.037828
License: Public Domain

BER.ZON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting in part:
I respectfully dissent. The majority’s peculiar interpretation of the word “reasonableness” not only defies its common usage in the English language, but more importantly, runs contrary to what this court decided, sitting en banc, in United *1298States v. Ameline, 409 F.3d 1073 (9th Cir.2005) (en banc). Because our intention in Ameline was to give all defendants, even those like Combs, the same reasonableness review we conduct on post-Booker sentences — an intention borne out by the language used repeatedly in Ameline itself — I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that Combs is entitled only to the most anemic of appellate reviews: an inquiry solely into “[wjhether the district judge properly understood the full scope of his discretion in a post-Booker world.” Furthermore, because the district judge in this case failed even that test — using language when reimposing Combs’s sentence that indicates that he failed to appreciate the nature of his post-Booker sentencing authority — I would vacate Combs’s sentence and remand to the district court so that it may properly comply with procedures set forth in Ameline.1
I.
In Ameline, we held that in cases where “we are faced with an unpreserved Booker error that may have affected a defendant’s substantial rights, and the record is insufficiently clear to conduct a complete plain error analysis,” a panel should remand the matter to the district court for a limited purpose: to “ascertain[ ] whether the sentence imposed would have been materially different had the district court known that the sentencing guidelines were advisory.” Id. at 1074. If, during the course of that remand, “the district court responds in the negative, the original sentence will stand, subject to appellate review for reasonableness.” Id. at 1074-75 (emphasis added).
There is no indication in Ameline that this subsequent reasonableness review was intended to be anything less than the reasonableness review generally afforded to post -Booker sentences. See generally United States v. Cantrell, 433 F.3d 1269, 1279-80 (9th Cir.2006). To the contrary. Ameline repeatedly and specifically cites to United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220, 268, 125 S.Ct. 738, 160 L.Ed.2d 621 (2005), and its “reasonableness standard,” in explicating what the appellate panel must do once a district court reimposes a sentence, having held that it would not have imposed a different sentence had it known the Guidelines were advisory. See Ameline, 409 F.3d at 1079 (holding that the reimposed sentence “will stand, provided it is reasonable,” and citing to Booker, 543 U.S. at 268, 125 S.Ct. 738, for the proposition that “both the Sixth Amendment ruling and the remedial interpretation of the Reform Act, including the reasonableness standard, apply to all cases pending on direct review”); id. at 1085 (emphasis added) (explaining that, following remand, “the defendant and the government have the right to appeal to this court the district court’s decision, including a challenge to the sentence based on the reasonableness standard established in Booker,” and citing Booker, 543 U.S. at 261-62, 125 S.Ct. 738).
That this is the standard of review Ame-line intended after a limited remand is corroborated by the fact that the same standard of review was adopted by other circuits whose opinions we explicitly relied on when deciding Ameline. In outlining its version of the limited Ameline remand process, the Seventh Circuit, for example, explained that if the district judge reimposes his original sentence, “we will affirm the original sentence against a plain-error challenge provided that the sentence is reasonable, the standard of appellate re*1299view prescribed by Booker.” United States v. Paladino, 401 F.3d 471, 484 (7th Cir.) (emphasis added) (citing Booker, 543 U.S. at 261, 125 S.Ct. 738), cert. denied sub nom. Peyton v. United States, — U.S. -, 126 S.Ct. 106, 163 L.Ed.2d 118 (2005). Significantly, the Seventh Circuit immediately added: “The proviso is important; the mere reimposition of the original sentence does not insulate it from appellate review under the new standard.” Id.; see also United States v. Crosby, 397 F.3d 103, 114-16 (2d Cir.2005) (detailing the extent of the “reasonableness” review to be done, even if the sentencing error is only “available for review under plain error analysis”), abrogation on other grounds recognized by United States v. Lake, 419 F.3d 111, 113 n. 2 (2d Cir.2005).
To be sure, as the majority notes, there is one distinction between Combs’s appeal and the one brought by Ameline. Specifically, while Ameline did not initially challenge the constitutionality of the Guidelines in the district court or in his opening brief, he did challenge other aspects of his original sentence on appeal. See Ameline, 409 F.3d at 1076; see also Paladino, 401 F.3d at 479-81 (describing the sentencing claims raised by defendants on appeal); Crosby, 397 F.3d at 119 (describing the sentencing claim Crosby raised on appeal). Combs, on the other hand, did neither.2 Arguably, then, he is not entitled to a windfall — in the guise of a full reasonableness review of his sentence — because he never questioned his sentence in the first instance. Ameline, however, never made this distinction, and it is, therefore, not one that we can draw. Instead, under Ameline, defendants like Combs are entitled to the same reasonableness review as defendants who had from the outset challenged their sentences on appeal.
I must therefore dissent.
II.
I also dissent from the majority’s conclusion that the district judge in this case properly understood the full scope of his post-Booker discretion. The language used by the district court when reimposing Combs’s sentence leads to precisely the opposite conclusion.
Again, I return to the language of Ame-line. There, we held that when an appellate panel is “faced with an unpreserved Booker error that may have affected a defendant’s substantial rights, and the record is insufficiently clear to conduct a complete plain error analysis, a limited remand to the district court is appropriate for the purpose of ascertaining whether the sentence imposed would have been materially different had the district court known that the sentencing guidelines were advisory.” 409 F.3d at 1074 (emphasis added). This inquiry is inherently subjective. It requires that the district judge ask whether he would have imposed a different sentence at the time of the original sentencing had he sentenced the defendant under a post-Booker advisory Guidelines regime. See id. at 1083; id. at 1085 (noting that, on remand, “the district court judge determines [whether] the sentence imposed would not have differed materially had he been aware that the Guidelines were advisory” (emphasis added)); see also United States v. Lence, 466 F.3d 721, 725 (9th Cir.2006) (holding that a criminal defendant who preserved his Sixth Amendment *1300error and is thus entitled to a full resen-tencing should be resentenced by his original judge because “[a] defendant who preserves a claim of error should receive no less of a chance to benefit from [a] subjective assessment than a defendant who fails to preserve a claim of error and obtains a limited Ameline remand”).
The district judge who resentenced Combs failed to conduct the Ameline remand from this properly subjective vantage point. In reimposing Combs’s sentence, the judge did not conclude that he would not have imposed a materially different sentence had he known the sentencing guidelines were advisory. Instead, he found that “[t]he distinction between mandatory and advisory guidelines would not have necessitated a materially different sentence in this case.” (Emphasis added.) The significance of this locution is not simply a matter of an inartful or careless choice of words, or the use of the passive rather than active voice. Instead, like the language quoted by the majority, the language quoted above indicates that the district judge approached his post -Booker sentencing task from as mechanical a perspective as he did pre-Booker, oblivious to the contradiction inherent in his conclusion that an advisory system did not necessitate any particular result at all. In short, unlike the majority, I read the district judge’s words, taken as a whole, as indicating that he did not understand “the full scope of his discretion in a post-Booker world.”
For all of the above reasons, I dissent.

. I concur in that portion of the majority opinion holding that, in a limited Ameline remand, the district judge is not "to consider ... objections defendant could have raised the first time around, but failed to do so.”

. Combs's original appeal challenged only his conviction. See United States v. Combs, 394 F.3d 739 (9th Cir.2005). One day after the Ninth Circuit issued its original decision in Combs, the Supreme Court decided Booker. This court subsequently granted Combs a limited remand, pursuant to Ameline. See United States v. Combs, 412 F.3d 1020 (9th Cir.2005) (amending prior opinion).