Court Opinion

ID: 9479124
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:08:57.60293+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:50.479103
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I join fully in Judge Manion’s clear and persuasive opinion for the panel. I am constrained to note, however, how this case illustrates the heightened importance of the fact-finding process at sentencing under the Guidelines. Now, each fact found at the time of sentencing has a specific and inescapable consequence for the defendant’s sentence. In this case, although Agyemang pleaded guilty only to two counts, his sentence will presumably issue as the automatic consequence of facts found later on. Of course, the same facts could have been found under pre-Guidelines law, but then the trial judge’s discretion decisively broke the iron link between facts and sentence. As the facts become disposi-tive, the importance of accurate fact-finding must inevitably increase. It has always been the law that a defendant has a right to be sentenced on the basis of correct information, but now the significance of that information is palpable, immediate and inescapable. It seems to me to follow that in the Guidelines era even greater care will have to be exercised, and closer scrutiny accorded to, the process by which the sentence-dictating facts are established.