Court Opinion

ID: 9498592
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:21:56.167342+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:55.840319
License: Public Domain

LOKEN, Chief Judge,
concurring.
I concur but write separately to note my partial disagreement with the court’s analysis of guidelines departure issues after United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220, 125 S.Ct. 738, 160 L.Ed.2d 621 (2005). In Booker, the Supreme Court’s remedial opinion stripped the guidelines of their mandatory effect but held that federal sentencing courts must still “consult [the] Guidelines and take them into account when sentencing.” 125 S.Ct. at 767. The Court also left intact 18 U.S.C. § 3742(f)(1), which provides that an appellate court “shall remand the case for further sentencing proceedings” if it determines that a sentence was “imposed as a result of an incorrect application” of the guidelines. Finally, the Court instructed courts to review all sentences' — whether within or outside the advisory guidelines range — for reasonableness as measured against the sentencing factors set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). 125 S.Ct. at 765-66.
*633I agree with our panels that have interpreted Booker as requiring a two step process in imposing and reviewing sentences under the new advisory guidelines. “We first ask whether the district court correctly applied the guidelines in determining a guidelines sentencing range. If the guidelines were correctly applied, we then consider whether the sentence chosen by the district court was reasonable in light of all the § 3553(a) factors.” United States v. Hadash, 408 F.3d 1080, 1082 (8th Cir.2005). My concern grows out of dicta in United States v. Haack that inserted an intermediate step in this process: after determining the correct sentencing range, “the court should then decide if a traditional departure is appropriate under Part K and/or § 4A1.3” of the guidelines. 403 F.3d 997, 1003 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S.-, 126 S.Ct. 276, 163 L.Ed.2d 246 (2005). In this case, applying that dicta, the court analyzes a number of “traditional departure” issues under pr e-Booker mandatory guidelines authorities.
In my view, this approach unduly complicates our appellate task and may compel a significant number of essentially meaningless remands. In reviewing post-Boofcer sentences outside the guidelines range imposed by a district court that correctly determined that range, I would instead adopt the approach of the Seventh Circuit: “after Booker what is at stake is the reasonableness of the sentence, not the correctness of the ‘departures’ as measured against pr e-Booker decisions that cabined the discretion of sentencing courts to depart from guidelines that were then mandatory.” United States v. Johnson, 427 F.3d 423, 426 (7th Cir.2005).
By this approach, I do not suggest that district courts should ignore altogether the Sentencing Commission’s policy statements in § 4A1.3 and Part 5K of the now-advisory guidelines. The district court must give reasons for sentencing outside a properly determined guidelines range. Explaining whether those reasons are consistent with prior limitations on the court’s departure authority under the mandatory guidelines will obviously assist this court in determining on appeal whether the sentence is reasonable, and may well be essential when, as in Haack, the government has filed a substantial assistance motion. However, many departure rules under the mandatory guidelines have little or no practical impact on sentencing under the post-Booker advisory guidelines. In determining whether to remand under § 3742(f)(1) because of “an incorrect application of the sentencing guidelines,” I would deem any such violations of those rules to be harmless error.
In this case, for example, I consider the alleged departure notice error to be harmless because, after Booker, every defendant is aware that the court may sentence outside the guidelines range based on the § 3553(a) factors. I also consider the district court’s alleged errors in relying on prior arrests and in departing upward from criminal history category IV to be harmless because they are not reversible error under Booker, so long as the sentence is reasonable. Because the court determines, correctly in my view, that Hawk Wing’s sentence is reasonable, a remand on either or both of these grounds would not result in a different sentence.
Subject to these caveats, I concur and join in the opinion of the court.