Court Opinion

ID: 9489408
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:15:15.600699+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:31.223538
License: Public Domain

SILER, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur with the majority opinion’s conclusion that the district court erred in its downward departure on the sentence. I also agree with the conclusion in Part III that the prosecution forfeited its objection to the downward departure. I further agree with the application of the Koon decision, which precludes a finding of plain error when the district court departed under the “lesser harms” policy statement in USSG § 5K2.11 because Barajas-Nunez thought his girlfriend was in danger of physical harm.
However, I respectfully dissent from Part IV of the majority opinion that concludes that it was plain error for the district court to have departed downward from the Guidelines under USSG § 5K2.13, the diminished mental capacity provision. Under Fed. R.Crim.P. 52(b), if the error was plain and affected substantial rights, we may correct the error, but we are not required to do so. United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 735-36, 113 S.Ct. 1770, 1778-79, 123 L.Ed.2d 508 (1993). Before proceeding to the principle from Olano that the court should correct a plain forfeited error that affects substantial rights when the “error ‘seriously affect[s] the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings,’ ” id. at 736, 113 S.Ct. at 1779 (quoting United States v. Atkinson, 297 U.S. 157, 160, 56 S.Ct. 391, 392, 80 L.Ed. 555 (1936)), the court must first determine whether the error affected “substantial rights.” I do not think it did.
Finding “substantial rights” may be as elusive as deciding what error is “plain.” In deciding whether substantial rights have been affected, “[njormally, although perhaps not in every ease, the defendant must make a specific showing of prejudice to satisfy the ‘affecting substantial rights’ prong of Rule 52(b).” Id. at 735, 113 S.Ct. at 1778. However, defendant here is not trying to show prejudice. To the contrary, it would prejudice his case if we were to reverse the district court.
United States v. Zeigler, 19 F.3d 486, 494 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S.-, 115 S.Ct. 517, 130 L.Ed.2d 422 (1994), is the only case cited in the majority opinion where a federal appellate court found plain error in favor of the government, when the government forfeited its objection to the sentence. There, the court did not even mention “substantial rights” and barely mentioned Rule 52(b). That case is much different from the ease at bar, as the failure of the government in Ziegler to object at sentencing was excused because the law of the circuit was *836consistent with the sentence rendered by the district court. Only when the Supreme Court rendered its decision in Deal v. United States, 508 U.S. 129, 113 S.Ct. 1993, 124 L.Ed.2d 44 (1993), while Ziegler was on appeal, was it apparent that Ziegler’s sentence was illegal, which was plain error. In this ease, there is no legal excuse by the government as to why it did not object.
Here, the sentence imposed by the district court, although erroneous, was not illegal, as it fit within the statutory limits of 8 U.S.C. § 1326. Moreover, although the majority opinion suggests that the error by the sentencing court affected substantial rights, it couches those rights in terms of a fairness in the criminal sentencing system. Put another way, it was unfair to all other similarly-situated defendants who may have to serve longer sentences for the same offense. Thus, this is an attack on the integrity and public reputation of the judicial system under the language from Olano. Nevertheless, I am not convinced that prejudice to the prosecution in this case involves nonrelated cases that the prosecution in the Western District of Michigan or the several other federal districts may or may not pursue. I also do not think that it diminishes the integrity and public reputation of the judicial system. If there is something unfair here, it is unfair to the trial judge who was ambushed on appeal, when he was not given an opportunity to correct any errors at sentencing because the prosecution failed to object.
Therefore, I would affirm the sentence in this case because I think that when the government forfeited its objection in the sentencing process, there was no plain error. The sentence was not illegal nor was there a significant change in the law, such as occurred in Deal. Moreover, “substantial rights,” as described in Olano, are those rights of the defendant at bar, not substantial rights of defendants in other cases.