Court Opinion

ID: 9486389
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:46:54.172654+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:42.114554
License: Public Domain

*1390EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
The district court imposed a sentence below the range prescribed by the Sentencing Guidelines, and the United States took an appeal. The only question presented is the propriety of departing for the reasons the court gave. Part II.B of the court’s opinion shows that the district court’s approach conflicts with the text and structure of the guidelines. I join that portion of the opinion and the judgment remanding the case for resentencing.
On the way to the questions the parties have debated, the majority takes a detour. Raising on its own initiative the question whether 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(4), • which requires the court to use the guidelines in force at the time of sentencing, violates the ex post facto clause of the Constitution, the majority “holds” that it does. I do not join this exercise in obiter dicta, for the question was not raised in the district court or this one and is not pertinent to the disposition of the case.
Appellate judges do not possess roving discretion to deliver opinions on issues that lurk in the background of eases, but that the parties themselves do not present for decision. Ours is an adversarial system; judges write opinions to explain their resolution of concrete disputes, not to generate law in the abstract. Hewitt v. Helms, 482 U.S. 755, 761-63, 107 S.Ct. 2672, 2676-77, 96 L.Ed.2d 654 (1987); Alliance to End Repression v. Chicago, 820 F.2d 873, 876 (7th Cir.1987). In the main, we must be mum about questions the parties neglect to address.
In criminal cases the sole source of authority to decide non-jurisdietional issues that the parties have not preserved in the district court and raised in their appellate briefs is Fed.R.Crim.P. 52(b): “Plain errors or defects affecting substantial rights may be noticed although they were not brought to the attention of the court.” Following the express command of a statute cannot be plain error. The reticence any court should bring to the task of constitutional adjudication — a diffidence captured by the maxim that statutes enjoy a strong presumption of constitutionality, United States v. Watson, 423 U.S. 411, 416, 96 S.Ct. 820, 824, 46 L.Ed.2d 598 (1976) — precludes an appeal to Rule 52(b). “ ‘Plain’ [in Rule 52(b) ] is synonymous' with ‘clear’ or, equivalently, ‘obvious.’” United States v. Olano, — U.S. -, -, 113 S.Ct. 1770, 1777, 123 L.Ed.2d 508 (1993). See United States v. Caputo, 978 F.2d 972, 975 (7th Cir.1992) (an error is “plain” only if gravely prejudicial and obvious in retrospect). Section 3553(a)(4) is not sereechingly unconstitutional. A series of decisions in this circuit has expressed divergent views about the subject and postponed decision to a case in which the subject is fully briefed and controls the outcome, not the approach one would expect if the statute were some constitutional pariah. E.g., United States v. Kopshever, 6 F.3d 1218, 1221-23 (7th Cir.1993); United States v. Schnell, 982 F.2d 216, 218-19 (7th Cir.1992); United States v. Bader, 956 F.2d 708, 709 (7th Cir.1992). Indeed, the common thread of the many cases in this circuit noting the question is that it is not plain error to follow § 3553(a)(4). That is why other panels reserved decision. The one thing these cases can be said to hold is that this constitutional question should not be decided until it has been fully briefed and matters to the judgment.
Even obvious errors do not lead to automatic condemnation. Only an error that produces a miscarriage of justice supports an invocation of Rule 52(b). That means an error “seriously a£fect[ing] the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings.” United States v. Atkinson, 297 U.S. 157, 160, 56 S.Ct. 391, 392, 80 L.Ed. 555 (1936), followed in Olano, — U.S. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 1779. For all the majority tells us, the choice between the 1988 and 1991 versions of the guidelines had no effect on Seacott’s sentence, which may explain why the parties paid the subject no heed despite cases such as Bader and Schnell inviting attention to the status of § 3553(a)(4). Today the 1993 guidelines are in force; do these differ materially from the rules on the books when Seacott defrauded the credit union? Will that difference affect the sentence? (Small differences produce overlapping ranges, and the same sentence is possible under each version.)
*1391Olano emphasizes that Rule 52(b) permits courts of appeals to disregard even plain and prejudicial errors. 113 S.Ct. at 1778-79. Thus even if the application of § 3558(a)(4) was both clearly inappropriate and prejudicial to Seacott, we must act prudently in deciding whether to address the question. Issuing an opinion on the constitutionality of an Act of Congress, when the parties have not given us an adversarial presentation on the issue, is not prudent. The United States Attorney filed a brief conceding that § 3553(a)(4) is unconstitutional, apparently believing that we have so held in Kopshever — a case that carefully reserved decision on the issue, 6 F.3d at 1222 n. 6. A concession based on a misreading of our precedents means that we have not had the benefit of an adversarial presentation.- Decisions reached without the benefit of the parties’ views are more likely to overlook important matters. (The majority does not mention the considerations I discuss below.) The prosecutor’s concession may justify instructing the district court to use the 1988 version of the guidelines on remand; it does not justify a “holding” that the law violates the Constitution.
Instead of finding ways to express a constitutional verdict on § 3553(a)(4), we should be searching for ways to avoid decision. Spector Motor Service, Inc. v. McLaughlin, 323 U.S. 101, 105, 65 S.Ct. 152, 154, 89 L.Ed. 101 (1944); Brockett v. Spokane Arcades, Inc., 472 U.S. 491, 501, 105 S.Ct. 2794, 2800, 86 L.Ed.2d 394 (1985). Constitutional adjudication is a last resort. Justice Brandeis’s concurring opinion in Ashwander v. TVA, 297 U.S. 288, 347, 56 S.Ct. 466, 483, 80 L.Ed. 688 (1936), is but the most famous exposition of a principle that has existed since the founding of this Nation. Yet my colleagues do not contend that decision has been forced upon them; instead, they seek out a question that the parties -themselves do not believe material to this case.
Because the majority has decided to tackle this subject, I express a few words of doubt about my colleagues’ approach. Article I § 9 cl. 3 of the Constitution provides: “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.” The only statute the majority discusses is § 3553(a)(4), which assuredly is not an ex post facto law. It was enacted in 1984, with an effective date of November 1, 1987; both dates are well before Seacott committed his crimes. What my colleagues must mean is that Sentencing Guidelines altered after the date of the offense are ex post facto laws. Yet Art. I § 9 cl. 3 applies to Congress, not to the judicial branch of government, in which the Sentencing Commission is located. Mistretta v. United States, 488 U.S. 361, 384-97, 109 S.Ct. 647, 661, 102 L.Ed.2d 714 (1989). “The Ex Post Facto Clause is a limitation upon the powers of the Legislature, see Calder v. Bull, 3 Dall. 386, 1 L.Ed. 648 (1798), and does not of its own force apply to the Judicial Branch of government.” Marks v. United States, 430 U.S. 188, 191, 97 S.Ct. 990, 992, 51 L.Ed.2d 260 (1977). See also Prater v. U.S. Parole Commission, 802 F.2d 948, 951-52 (7th Cir.1986) (en banc). Guidelines are not “laws”; only Congress makes “laws”; the guidelines are administrative rules. Mistretta, 488 U.S. at 391-97, 109 S.Ct. at 664-68; see Stinson v. United States, U.S. -, -, 113 S.Ct. 1913, 1918-19, 123 L.Ed.2d 598 (1993). We emphasized their status as rules rather than laws when holding that a misapplication of the guidelines does not support relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. See Scott v. United States, 997 F.2d 340 (7th Cir.1993).
One may say that the guidelines have “the force of law,” see United States v. Bell, 991 F.2d 1445, 1449-52 (8th Cir.1993), but this is a figure of speech. The constitutional status of federal rules does not depend on metaphors. To say that the guidelines have the “force of law” is to say that courts will enforce them, but this is also true of declarations in judicial opinions. The reference to “ex post facto Laws” appears in Article I and uses the meaning of “Law” in that Article, which establishes and regulates the legislative branch of government. A “Law” is a bill passed by both Houses of Congress and signed by the President, or enacted by two-thirds of each chamber without the President’s approval. Thus in Prater the full bench concluded that the Parole Commission’s release guidelines are not “Laws” for purposes of Art. I § 9 el. 3, although they are authorized by statute, promulgated in the Federal Register, have the “force of law” in *1392the same sense as other regulations, and determine the length of time a felon spends in prison. See 802 F.2d at 952-53. Prater allowed that a complete delegation of legislative power might be subject to analysis under Art. I § 9 cl. 3, see 802 F.2d at 954, but Congress has not handed over to the Sentencing Commission the power to increase penalties for crime. Although it has authorized the Commission to permit sentences lower than mandatory minima, 18 U.S.C. § 3553(c), it has not authorized the Commission to increase maximum penalties. The Sentencing Reform Act creates only the power to guide judicial discretion within the statutory limits. Like the parole release guidelines, the Sentencing Guidelines are benchmarks: statements of the normal outcome that do not prohibit variation when circumstances. show that the benchmark time in prison is inappropriate. See United States v. Rivera, 994 F.2d 942 (1st Cir.1993) (Breyer, J.).
The federal guidelines differ from the Florida .sentencing guidelines addressed in Miller v. Florida, 482 U.S. 423, 107 S.Ct. 2446, 96 L.Ed.2d 351 (1987). Florida authorized its supreme court to adopt rules that would become effective “only upon the subsequent adoption by the Legislature of legislation implementing the guidelines as then revised.” Fla.Stat. § 921.001(4)(b). This made the state’s sentencing guidelines “laws” for constitutional purposes, the Court concluded. 482 U.S. at 435, 107 S.Ct. at 2453. We know from Mistretta, however, that the federal guidelines are judicial products, and from Stinson and Scott that they are rules rather than “laws.”
When Marks said that the ex post facto clause does not apply “of its own force”, to the executive and judicial branches, it was recognizing that a line of cases uses the due process clauses of the fifth and fourteenth amendments to limit the powers of these actors. Decisions inspired by the ex post facto jurisprudence hold that the executive branch may not promulgate surprising rules, or the judicial branch fashion surprising interpretations of existing rules, that deprive criminal defendants of fair notice. E.g., Bouie v. Columbia, 378 U.S. 347, 84 S.Ct. 1697, 12 L.Ed.2d 894 (1964); Prater, 802 F.2d at 952.
Changes in the Sentencing Guidelines do not deprive defendants of notice that their conduct is unlawful- (they do not affect substantive prohibitions) or the range of possible sanctions. Congress sets minimum and maximum penalties, and these, established before the crime occurs, set the boundaries of the wrongdoer’s punishment. Before there were guidelines, judges could select a sentence from any part of the statutory range. Defendants had no expectations about where in the range their sentences would fall. A given case could come before the one stiff sen-tencer on an otherwise lenient bench; the defendant sentenced to the statutory maximum, while others who committed the same crime received probation, had no complaint. If after the crime occurred the only judge in the district retired, and the President replaced á bleeding heart with a nail-eating enforcer, again the defendant had no complaint — for the notice came from the statute and not from the practices of the bench. “No one contemplating criminal activity should be encouraged to rely on the practices of judges, prosecutors, prison officials, or parole boards; that is not the sort of reliance that the prohibition against ex post facto laws ought to protect or does protect.” Prater, 802 F.2d at 955-56.
So too with the Sentencing Guidelines. The tables at the time of an offense do not notify a would-be criminal that his exposure stops short of the statutory maximum. The judge may give a sentence exceeding the guideline range; if the range goes up, the judge may compensate by selecting a sentence lower in the range or may depart downward. Only a fool uses the raw text of the Sentencing Guidelines to determine whether crime pays; he must take account of departures, plus the substantial uncertainty about the meaning of many parts of the text.
Changing the guidelines after the commission of a crime does not deprive the criminal of notice of the elements of the offense or the statutory limits of punishment. It may upset the expectations of the few would-be wrongdoers who study sentencing practices to determine their risks — though even a small *1393change in the probability of arrest or prosecution will have a much greater effect on the anticipated punishment than does a change in the guidelines, and no one believes that pouring extra resources into the detection and prosecution of crime violates the ex post facto or due process clause. Unless the ex post facto clause is to be applied to judicial action, and cases from Colder to Marks to Prater are to be overruled, we cannot condemn § 3553(a)(4) under Art. I § 9 cl. 3. And whether a particular alteration in the guidelines exceeds the latitude allowed by the due process clause is not a question that can be answered in the abstract.