Court Opinion

ID: 9497494
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:52:25.483432+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:13.388839
License: Public Domain

KLEINFELD, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur in Part I of the majority’s opinion and respectfully dissent from Part II.
The majority remands this appeal for resentencing because it is unsure whether the district court knew that the Sentencing Guidelines gave it the authority to depart downward. I see no reason to doubt that the district court judge knew this elementary and oft-arising area of law quite well. And the judge’s silence on whether he had authority to depart, is under controlling Ninth Circuit authority, the end of it.1
*799Here, the district court actually indicated its understanding of its authority to depart from the guidelines. In discussing possible sentences that might be imposed if the defendant again entered the United States illegally, the court stated, “And quite frankly, it’s going to get worse, not better. In fact, the sentencing commission is trying to take out any possible departures.” This quote indicates that the district court understood that it currently possessed authority to depart.
Further, in imposing sentence, the district court stated, “I’ll treat you as a criminal history category V, but the sentence is still going to be 51 months in custody. The range for V is 46 to 57, the range for a VI is 51 to 63. Either way I’m going to give you 51 months. That’s the best I can do.” If, as the defendant argues, the district court would have sentenced him to less time but for its mistaken belief that it could not depart, the logical sentence would have been 46 months, the bottom of the guidelines range. That the judge chose to sentence Arellano-Gallegos to 51 months, a term right in the middle of the applicable range, combined with the judge’s comment about the possibility of departures being disallowed in the future, leaves me with no doubt that the judge understood his authority to depart but declined to do so. That being so, we lack jurisdiction to review the court’s decision.2
As to the judge’s remarks about what the law required him to do, he was plainly referring to what the guidelines required if he did not depart. If he were ignorant of the possibility of departures, as the majority supposes, he would not have spoken of “the sentencing commission ... trying to take out any possible departures” as something “worse” for the defendant than the current state of affairs. “The best I can do” obviously means, just as it often does in private negotiations, “the best I choose to do.”

. See United States v. Garcia-Garcia, 927 F.2d 489, 491 (9th Cir. 1991) ("[T]he district court has no obligation affirmatively to state that it has authority to depart when it sentences *799within the guideline range instead of departing. Therefore failure to depart, when the record is silent on the issue of authority, and sentence is imposed within the applicable guideline range, is not unlawful and is not appealable on that basis.”).

. United States v. Smith, 330 F.3d 1209, 1212 (9th Cir.2003).