Court Opinion

ID: 9497957
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:04:37.686328+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:31.758155
License: Public Domain

BYE, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part, dissenting in part.
I dissent'from section II of the majority opinion, in all other respects I concur. The phrase “three-ring circus” (referring to the three-way circuit split) has been used to describe the federal circuits’ dispa*563rate handling of Booker pipeline cases. Such a phrase is descriptive, nonetheless, it is probably more appropriate to characterize the split as a three-ring circus with twelve unique acts each attempting to dazzle us with its compelling logic. Yet, despite the unique nature of each act, like the conspicuous facial hair on the bearded lady, one common theme prevails-the undeniable difficulty in assessing the prejudice suffered by any particular defendant. See United States v. Shelton, 400 F.3d 1325, 1332 (11th Cir.2005); United States v. Crosby, 397 F.3d 103, 117-18 (2d Cir.2005); United States v. Hughes, 396 F.3d 374, 381 n. 8 (4th Cir.2005), amended on rehearing by, 401 F.3d 540 (4th Cir.2005); United States v. Mares, 402 F.3d 511, 522 (5th Cir.2005); United States v. Oliver, 397 F.3d 369, 379 n. 3 (6th Cir.2005); United States v. Paladino, 401 F.3d 471, 482 (7th Cir.2005); United States v. Dazey, 403 F.3d 1147, 1174 (10th Cir.2005); United States v. Rodriguez, 398 F.3d 1291, 1301 (11th Cir.2005); United States v. Coles, 403 F.3d 764, 769 (D.C.Cir.2005).
When faced with such difficulty the Supreme Court informs us in certain instances an error should be presumed prejudicial.17 United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 735, 113 S.Ct. 1770, 123 L.Ed.2d 508 (1993). The Court left undetermined the bounds of which errors should and should not be considered presumptively prejudicial, id. at 735-39, 113 S.Ct. 1770, and it has not been presented with an opportunity to elaborate on the bounds of the presumption. However, the lack of such an opportunity does not affect- the validity of the presumption, as the lower courts have the power and duty to address such bounds. Indeed, in response to this duty the lower courts have begun to carve a niche for the presumption. See United States v. Serrano-Beauvaix, 400 F.3d 50, 59 (1st Cir.2005) (Lipez, J., concurring) (discussing situations where “[c]ourts have presumed prejudice for errors that, by their very nature, make a demonstration of prejudice exceptionally difficult”). These courts have found a presumption of prejudice appropriate “in cases where the inherent nature of the error [make] it exceptionally difficult for the defendant to demonstrate that the outcome of the lower proceeding would [be] different had the error not occurred.” United States v. Barnett, 398 F.3d 516, 526-27 (6th Cir.2005) (citing United States v. Reyna, 358 F.3d 344, 351-52 (5th Cir.2004) (en banc); United States v. Adams, 252 F.3d 276, 287 (3d Cir.2001); United States v. Riascos-Suarez, 73 F.3d 616, 627 (6th Cir.1996)).
Our court, for example, applied a presumption of prejudice to a plain error situation in Rush v. Smith, 56 F.3d 918 (8th Cir.1995) (en banc). There, Timothy Rush, an African-American, appealed from an adverse jury verdict on his civil rights action against two police officers whom he claimed used excessive force against him. Id. at 919. The appeal revolved around the dismissal of the only African-American juror, who the court dismissed after a snowstorm caused her to be unable to attend trial. Id. at 920. In attempting to explain the juror’s absence to the remainder of the jury, the court made some ill-advised comments regarding racial solidarity. Id. at 921. Applying Olano’s plain error standard, our court sitting en banc determined on the particular facts of the case the potential for prejudice in the *564minds of the jurors was so great that no specific showing of actual prejudice was required. Id. at 923. The court reached this holding “[b]ecause of the impracticality of determining what, if any, effect this racially-divisive remark had on the jury....” Id.
Like the impracticality of determining the prejudice actually suffered when a trial judge makes racially divisive remarks to the jury, it is impractical, if not impossible, to gauge the prejudice actually suffered by a defendant sentenced under a mandatory as opposed to an advisory guideline regime. The duty of showing prejudice which the majority seeks to bestow on a defendant is like asking a defendant to prove the existence of a divine-being or the existence of life on a planet other than our own. The evidence either does not exist or is beyond the defendant’s mere human capabilities, thus any attempt to explain how a defendant may meet this showing, without an explicit statement on the record by the sentencing judge, is nothing more than an empty exercise in casuistry.
Admittedly, plain error review often requires an appellate court to speculate, but this judicial conjecture is at least based upon concrete evidentiary considerations. In a situation such as the present, set up by the dramatic change in the federal sentencing framework, we have very little in the way of concrete and reliable indicators of how a defendant was prejudiced by a judge’s mistaken mandatory application of the guidelines. Some have suggested we can tell how a judge will sentence under an advisory regime by looking to where the defendant’ sentence fell within the guideline range available ip the district court under the mandatory regime. In other words, those (espousing this viewpoint suggest a judge is unlikely to give a defendant a reduced sentence if his sentence fell in the middle to upper ends of the guideline range. However, even though a judge may have declined to exercise discretion to select a lower sentence under the mandatory regime, this does not necessarily imply the judge would duplicate the sentence under the advisory regime, for two reasons. First, because a judge strictly applying the mandatory guidelines in a case falling within an offense’s heartland, regardless of the jurist’s private views on the adequacy of the guideline range, would pick a sentence relative to the other defendants falling within such range. Paladino, 401 F.3d at 482. Thus, the fact a judge applied the guidelines in the manner Congress and the Sentencing Commission intended cannot be viewed as an implicit acquiescence to a sentence within the guideline range under an advisory regime. Second, the position where a sentence fell under the mandatory regime is not a reliable indicator of the prejudice suffered by a defendant seeking resentencing under an advisory regime because it overlooks the fact a defendant’s sentence will now be affected by a judge’s greater discretion to consider the other factors under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). Barnett, 398 F.3d at 528.
Pre-Booker, the Supreme Court made clear the correctly calculated guideline range trumped all other factors under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). United States v. Booker, — U.S. -, -, 125 S.Ct. 738, 750, 160 L.Ed.2d 621 (2005) (citing Mistretta v. United States, 488 U.S. 361, 391, 109 S.Ct. 647, 102 L.Ed.2d 714 (1989)). Post-Booker, the correctly calculated guideline range presumably carries equal weight with the other § 3553(a) factors. See United States v. Ranum, 353 F.Supp.2d 984, 985-86 (E.D.Wis.2005) (finding the guidelines are just one of a number of sentencing factors to be considered). But see United States v. Wilson, 350 F.Supp.2d 910, 911 (D.Utah 2005) (stating the guidelines should be given considerable weight and followed in all but the most unusual circumstances). *565Thus, in addition to consideration of the guideline range the court must give equal consideration to sentencing factors such as just punishment, deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, and the need for the sentence to reflect the nature and circumstances of the offense and the history and characteristics of the defendant. See § 3553(a).
In assessing the history and characteristics of the defendant there is no limitation on the information concerning the background, character, and conduct of a person which a court may consider for the purposes of imposing an appropriate sentence. Booker, 125 S.Ct. at 760 (citing 18 U.S.C. § 3661). Accordingly, factors previously deemed ordinarily irrelevant to sentencing under Chapter 5H of the guidelines such as the defendant’s age, education and vocational skills, mental and emotional conditions, physical condition, employment record, family ties and responsibilities, and charitable service are now valid considerations for a court in imposing a sentence. Ranum, 353 F.Supp.2d at 985-86. We cannot know how consideration of factors such as these will affect a defendant’s sentence and to speculate is tantamount to performing the sentencing function at the appellate level. See Williams v. United States, 503 U.S. 193, 205, 112 S.Ct. 1112, 117 L.Ed.2d 341 (1992) (“[I]t is not the role of an appellate court to substitute its judgment for that of the sentencing court as to the appropriateness of a particular sentence.”).
Perhaps the only reliable indicator of the prejudice actually suffered by. the defendant would be unambiguous remarks on the record by the sentencing judge indicating she would give him a lower sentence had she the discretion to do so. Relief from error, however, should not depend on the vocal nature of the sentencing judge, United States v. Antonakopoulos, 399 F.3d
68, 81 (1st Cir.2005), because, for one thing, prior to Blakely there was no reason to provide such information. Rarely, for instance, is a sentencing judge as vocal as the court in United States v. Dyck, 287 F.Supp.2d 1016 (D.N.D.2003) (dissenting upon imposition of sentence). In fact, in light of the prevailing political climate many district judges would have been reluctant to vocalize any criticism of a guideline sentence. See United States v. Heldeman, 402 F.3d 220, 223 (1st Cir.2005) (recognizing a district judge may well not have expressed his or her reservations because the guidelines made them hopeless); see also Douglas A. Kelley, Minnesota Federal Judge Caught in a Constitutional Crossfire, 27 Hamline L.Rev. 427 (2004) (discussing the plight of the Honorable James M. Rosenbaum, Chief Judge, United States District Court for the District of Minnesota). The futility of expressing a desire to deviate downward from guideline range is even more pronounced in light of our pre-Blakely sentencing law, in which we overturned twenty-three out of twenty-five downward departures and affirmed forty-four out of forty-six upward departures. See United States v. Yirkovsky, 338 F.3d 936, 945 (8th Cir.2003) (Heaney J., dissenting) (highlighting statistics from May 2000 to July 2003). Therefore, while a district court’s unambiguous statements may affirmatively establish prejudice, the absence of comment does not establish the antithesis. In fact, in the absence of reasoned deliberation of the other § 3553(a) factors, not even the sentencing judge herself may be able to predict the term of imprisonment she would impose upon re-sentencing. Because of this uncertainty, in the absence of proof to the contrary, we must presume the defendant was prejudiced by the error, as this approach best promotes the policies which underpin Rule 52(b).
*566The policies underlying plain error “encourage timely objections and reduce wasteful reversals by demanding strenuous exertion to get relief for unpreserved error.” United States v. Dominguez Benitez, 542 U.S. 74, 124 S.Ct. 2333, 2340, 159 L.Ed.2d 157 (2004). In this regard, the plain-error standard attempts to strike a balance between “the proper functioning of the adversary system, efficiency in managing litigation, and the demands of justice.” United States v. Barnett, 398 F.3d 516, 532 (6th Cir.2005) (Gwin, J., concurring) (internal quotation omitted). “If every error resulted in reversal, trial courts would spend inordinate amounts of time re-trying cases that involved insubstantial errors.” Id. Conversely, “[a] rule that never considered errors unless there had been a trial objection ‘would result in counsel’s inevitably making a long laundry list of objections to rulings that were plainly supported by existing precedent.’ ” Id. (quoting Johnson v. United States, 520 U.S. 461, 468, 117 S.Ct. 1544, 137 L.Ed.2d 718 (1997)). I am concerned the unnecessarily rigid plain error standard championed by the majority disrupts' this balance. To preserve error for a client, a conscientious lawyer, under a fair reading of the majority opinion, must now raise a laundry list of objections before the district court, even to those issues deemed by all appellate courts to be well-settled.
As a matter of fact, the issue necessitating our plain error discussion was once well-settled. See, e.g., United States v. Guevara, 277 F.3d 111, 120 n. 4 (2d Cir.2001) (listing circuits that held Apprendi did not apply to the guidelines). While we should concern ourselves about the policies underlying Rule 52(b), we must not forget that any objection to what we now consider Booker or Blakely error was discouraged by doctrine equally pervasive as plain error, namely the prohibition against frivolous arguments. In actuality, a pre-Blakely demand by defendants to have a jury find facts applicable to sentencing beyond a reasonable, doubt would face a cold reception. "While some judges may have simply dismissed the argument, other judges would have rejected it as ridiculous, while still others would have admonished the lawyer for wasting the court’s time. "When so much of a lawyer’s effectiveness is based upon his or her reputation and credibility, why would any advocate risk diluting any meritorious arguments with something the overwhelming majority of judges would have deemed frivolous. The majority now sets out to punish defendants for failing to burden the court with objections deemed frivolous only a matter of months ago. “Frankly, ‘it seems unfair to fault [the defendant] for failing to raise at [sentencing] an objection based upon a rule that was not announced until after the [sentencing] was concluded.’ ” United States v. Serrano-Beauvaix, 400 F.3d 50, 60 (1st Cir.2005) (Lipez, J., concurring) (quoting United States v. Barone, 114 F.3d 1284, 1294 (1st Cir.1997)).
It would therefore appear the presumed prejudice exception to the prejudice requirement of the third prong of plain error review was tailor-made for Booker-type errors. Thus, in contrast to the majority which adopts the approach of the First, Fifth and Eleventh Circuits, I would adopt the approach thoroughly articulated by the Sixth Circuit in Barnett. Applying this approach to Pirani, the government on this record cannot overcome the presumption of prejudice.
In regard to the fourth prong of plain error review, which allows the court to exercise its discretion to correct a plain error if it seriously affects the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of the judicial proceedings, the majority compares the situation here to United States v. Cotton, 535 U.S. 625, 122 S.Ct. 1781, 152 *567L.Ed.2d 860 (2002). Such a comparison is undeserved. In Cotton, the Supreme Court declined to exercise its discretion under the fourth prong of plain error review where the government failed to present evidence of drug quantity to a grand jury in violation of the rule expressed in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000). Cotton, 535 U.S. at 632, 122 S.Ct. 1781. The Court stated the fairness and integrity of criminal justice system was not threatened by this error because the evidence of drug quantity was overwhelming and essentially uncontroverted, thus a grand jury surely would have found the requisite amount. Id. at 633-34, 122 S.Ct. 1781. Thus, in Cotton, had the drug quantity been properly presented to the grand jury and alleged in the indictment the outcome would have mirrored what actually happened in the original proceeding.
The same cannot be said with any certainty in the present case. The outcome of Pirani’s sentence absent the district court’s erroneous application of the mandatory guidelines would not necessarily mirror what happened at the original sentencing because the sentencing process has changed allowing the district court to consider factors previously deemed irrelevant. Therefore, unlike Cotton, we do not know what the outcome would be, and such uncertainty strikes at the heart of the fairness, integrity and public reputation of the judicial system. Paladino, 401 F.3d at 483 (“It is a miscarriage of justice to give a person an illegal sentence that increases his punishment, just as it is to convict an innocent person.”). I would therefore exercise our discretion to vacate Pirani’s sentence and remand to the district court for resentencing.

. The Olano court recognized three separate categories of plain error: (1) a category where the defendant must make a specific showing of prejudice; (2) a special category of errors that can be corrected regardless of their effect on the outcome; and (3) a category of errors that should be presumed prejudicial if the defendant cannot make a specific showing of prejudice. 507 U.S. at 735, 113 S.Ct. 1770.