Court Opinion

ID: 9483476
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:21:22.173949+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:38.795026
License: Public Domain

*445LAY, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I am pleased to join the dissents of Senior Judge Bright as well as Judge Beam.
The alleged goal of the Sentencing Commission in providing the relevant conduct guidelines as its “cornerstone” was to reduce unwarranted disparity. The present disagreement by this en banc court reinforces the observation that “disparity resulting from section 1B1.3 is flourishing in the federal courts, and the longer the Commission hews to its present course, the more courts can be expected to diverge from that course and disagree among themselves as to its fairness.” Daniel J. Freed, Federal Sentencing in the Wake of Guidelines: Unacceptable Limits on the Discretion of Sentencers, 101 Yale L.J. 1681, 1715 (1992). There can be little question that relevant conduct guidelines “reduce visibility and candor in sentencing.” Id. at 1714.1 The relevant conduct guidelines not only serve as a source to stretch principles of fairness beyond constitutional boundaries, see Arnold, C.J. dissenting opinion in U.S. v. Wise, 976 F.2d 393 (8th Cir.1992), but place unconscionable sanctions for the further dehumanization of individuals caught up in the federal criminal process. One would think that the Congress of the United States would recognize the unauthorized actions of the Sentencing Commission in invoking, sua sponte, the relevant conduct guidelines when noting that every foreign country and every state of this nation that has considered relevant conduct guidelines has rejected them. Relevant conduct guidelines are a political aberration of our times and repugnant to the basic principles of fair process and procedure traditionally thought to be indigenous to our federal criminal laws.

. As Professor Freed observed, the relevant conduct guidelines "exacerbate discrimination between well-represented defendants, for whom a careful bargain fixes the parameters for a predictable sentence, and less fortunate defendants who, inadequately represented, enter an untutored plea unaware of the relevant conduct consequences that may follow." Id.