Court Opinion

ID: 9480139
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:39:37.731694+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:30.773942
License: Public Domain

MERRITT, Chief Judge,
concurring.
For the reasons stated in my dissenting opinion in United States v. Brewer, 899 F.2d 503, 511-515 (6th Cir.1990) federal appellate courts should use not a “de novo” standard of review in cases applying the new sentencing guidelines but a “due deference” standard as expressly required by the governing statute: “The Court of Appeals ... shall give due deference to the district court’s application of the guidelines....” 18 U.S.C. § 3742(e). I would, therefore, apply an abuse of discretion standard to the question of whether the Sentencing Commission fully considered the particular combination of mitigating facts and circumstances which a district court has found to exist in a given case. The question of whether a given combination of sentencing facts makes a case “typical” or “atypical” (see Guidelines Manual, ch. I, § 4(b), Policy Statement, Nov. 1989) should be left to the district court under an abuse of discretion standard.
In this departure case, however, I do not find that the question is what standard of review we should follow in the ordinary departure case. Unlike other departure cases, the instant case does not concern the extent to which the Commission considered aggravating and mitigating factors in general, or considered the peculiar combination of aggravating and mitigating circumstances found in this case. Nor is the question *521one of the accuracy or reasonableness of the District Court’s calculation and application of the Guidelines.
Rather than focus on the deference due district court decisions in ordinary departure cases, our case requires us to consider only the deference due an unequivocal congressional pronouncement on the length of mandatory sentences to be imposed on a certain class of offenders. In 28 U.S.C. § 994(h) (Supp.1989), Congress explicitly required that “the Guidelines specify a sentence to a term of imprisonment at or near the maximum term authorized [by statute]” for particular third-time offenders. The defendant Hays is concededly such an offender. Turning then to 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(l)(B)(ii)(II) (Supp.1989), which prescribes the penalty for the offense for which Hays was convicted, we find that Congress designed a sentence range of 10 years to life for non-career offenders. For purposes of sentencing third-time offenders under 28 U.S.C. § 994(h), therefore, the “maximum term authorized" is life imprisonment. With this in mind, the Sentencing Commission created a “career offender” provision, which, in Hays’s case, sets a sentence of 30 years to life. See Guidelines § 4B1.1.
As a result of the interplay of these statutory provisions, the issue appropriate for appellate review is whether the District Court’s sentence in this case of 20 years is a sentence “at or near the maximum term authorized,” as the statute requires. A 20-year sentence is not “at or near” life imprisonment and therefore does not follow the intent of Congress that such career offenders receive the “maximum term authorized” under the statute. It is on that basis that I would reverse the District Court’s opinion. I would remand it to the District Court for sentencing in line with the intent expressly set out for career offenders in 28 U.S.C. § 994(h) and 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(l)(B)(ii)(II).