Court Opinion

ID: 9843288
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 02:32:27.0863+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:16:37.413762
License: Public Domain

O’SCANNLAIN, Circuit Judge,
with whom Judge Bea joins, concurring in part and dissenting in part:
With hundreds of Roofcer-implicated cases awaiting disposition, we have chosen one of the worst possible vehicles in our inventory — one that presents a clear sentencing error unrelated to the constitutional issue for which we took it en banc to decide. I am fascinated that while we unanimously agree that Ameline’s sentence must be vacated and remanded to the district court for resentencing because of the Howard error, the district court judge in this case is free to resentence on a clean slate and to apply Booker as he sees fit.
However, since the Court now promulgates the Second Circuit’s “limited remand” without vacatur approach as our standard for all other pending Booker-related appeals, I would, instead, follow the jurisprudence of the Fifth and Eleventh Circuits as described in, respectively, United States v. Mares, 402 F.3d 511 (5th Cir.2005), and United States v. Rodriguez, 398 F.3d 1291 (11th Cir.2005), and simply apply plain error review with our usual vigor — to use the majority’s language— “the way plain error review normally works.” Maj. op. at 1080.
Forced to make the best of our predicament, I concur in Parts I, II and V of Judge Rawlinson’s majority opinion and its result; I join Part I of Judge Wardlaw’s lead dissent; and I join Judge Gould’s dissent, with the exception of his analysis of the third prong of plain error review.