CA1 en banc: guidelines not presumptively reasonable

US v. Jiménez-Beltre, No. 05-1268 (en banc).  The First is back with this en banc opinion.  The court holds that: 1) a within guidelines sentence is reviewable (and the government’s statutory argument was hopeless based on the First’s analysis of Booker); 2) Almendarez-Torres is still good law, and 3) as Torruella points out in his concurrence, “the guidelines enjoy no presumption of reasonableness.”  To that end, the court doesn’t really say that the guidelines are presumptively reasonable, but rather, they are a starting point.

The court describes the guidelines as such:

...the guidelines are still generalizations that can point to outcomes that may appear unreasonable to sentencing judges in particular cases. Some of the guidelines in particular cases were not reflections of existing practice but were deliberate deviations or turned tendencies into absolutes.

Torruella goes on to emphasize the District Court’s point that judges must articulate their reasons, but must also articulate how sentences are “‘sufficient, but not greater than necessary’ to effectuate the goals of criminal punishment, as articulated in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)”

Howard dissents.

PRACDL comments here.  SL&P comments here.  First Circuit Federal Defender Blog comments here.

Comments

[Peter G]

I agree with you that Judge Howard's separate opinion, which he calls a "concurrence," should be labeled a dissent. He takes the position -- as the govt has been arguing unsuccessfully on a national basis -- that the court of appeals lacks jurisdiction even to review the reasonableness of a sentence that falls within the properly-calculated guideline range. (As the majority notes, the Supreme Court in Booker expressly stated the opposite, so the gov't's argument is untenable.) Since this sentence did fall within the range, Howard's opinion requires that he dissent from the majority's exercise of such jurisdiction, even to affirm. The real dissent is by Judge Lipez, who shows that the majority's "substantial weight" rule lacks a statutory basis, and that the district court therefore committed error in giving the guideline range such undue weight when imposing sentence.