{"id":11890,"date":"2010-10-14T12:16:18","date_gmt":"2010-10-14T17:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=11890"},"modified":"2010-10-14T12:16:18","modified_gmt":"2010-10-14T17:16:18","slug":"seventh-circuit-reverses-position-on-fast-track-sentencing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2010\/10\/seventh-circuit-reverses-position-on-fast-track-sentencing\/","title":{"rendered":"Seventh Circuit Reverses Position on Fast-Track Sentencing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Last week, in United States v. Reyes-Hernandez<\/em> <\/a>(No. 09-1249), the Seventh Circuit overruled United States v. Galicia-Cardenas<\/em>, 443 F.3d 553 (7th Cir. 2006), and held that sentencing judges may consider \u201cthe disparate treatment of immigration defendants that is created by fast-track programs in determining whether a Guidelines sentence is greater than necessary under the \u00a7 3553(a) factors\u201d (30).\u00a0 This is an important decision that deepens a circuit split on the sentencing of illegal reentrants into this country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At least sixteen districts, including the Mexican border districts, have developed fast-track programs that offer extraordinary sentencing benefits for illegal reentrants who plead guilty in an especially expedited fashion.\u00a0 (For background, see my article at 27 Hamline L. Rev. 357.)\u00a0 However, many other districts, including all of the Seventh Circuit districts, do not offer defendants the fast-track option, which creates wide sentencing disparities in illegal reentry cases.\u00a0 When the federal sentencing guidelines were converted from mandatory to advisory in 2005, many defendants in non-fast-track\u00a0districts argued that judges ought to give them the fast-track benefit in order to mitigate the disparities.\u00a0 Appellate courts, however,\u00a0uniformly rejected these arguments prior to 2007, when the Supreme Court reemphasized the discretionary nature of federal sentencing in Kimbrough v. United States<\/em>, 552 U.S. 85.\u00a0 Post-Kimbrough<\/em>, three circuits, now joined by the Seventh, have ruled that sentencing judges may consider the fast-track disparities.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

For the reasons set forth in Reyes-Hernandez<\/em>, I think this position is clearly the correct position if Kimbrough <\/em>is taken seriously.\u00a0 The Kimbrough <\/em>Court held that sentencing judges are permitted to take into account the disparities created by the\u00a0guidelines\u2019 harsher\u00a0treatment of crack than powder cocaine, notwithstanding various intimations from Congress that it approved of the disparities.\u00a0 (For more recent developments\u00a0in the area of\u00a0crack sentencing, see my posts here <\/a>and here<\/a>.)\u00a0 Likewise, the subtle ways in which Congress has arguably approved of fast-track disparities should not be enough to overcome the broad discretion sentencing judges have in the post-Booker <\/em>advisory system.\u00a0 If attempting to mitigate crack-powder disparities\u00a0is permissible\u00a0as a matter of law, then so should attempting to mitigate fast-track disparities.<\/p>\n

As the Seventh Circuit made clear, Reyes-Hernandez <\/em>only permits<\/em>, and does not require<\/em>, judges to take fast-track disparities into account.\u00a0 Moreover, the court signaled some doubt about the appropriateness of giving a below-guidelines sentence based solely on fast-track disparities:<\/p>\n

[W]e provide a word of caution that a departure from the guidelines premised solely on\u00a0a fast-track disparity may still be unreasonable.\u00a0 To withstand scrutiny, a departure should result from a holistic and meaningful review of all relevant \u00a7 3553(a) factors.\u00a0 (33)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Although now permitted to do, it is a separate (and more difficult)\u00a0question whether judges should <\/em>take the fast-track disparity into account.\u00a0 The problem with lowering one reentrant\u2019s sentence in a non-fast-track district is that it exacerbates disparities relative to other defendants in non-fast-track districts at the same time that it mitigates disparities relative to fast-track districts.\u00a0 One solution that I proposed a few years ago (see the article here<\/a>) would be to select a sentence based on the national average sentence imposed in all illegal reentry cases, which would presumably be somewhere between the fast-track and non-fast-track norms.<\/p>\n

The Reyes-Hernandez <\/em>court suggested another way of thinking about the problem, in light of the parsimony principle embodied in \u00a7 3553(a).\u00a0 As the court put it, \u201cIt has been observed even by strong defenders of the guidelines that the sentencing ranges called for under the guidelines for unlawful reentry cases are often unreasonably harsh and disproportionate to the seriousness of the offense\u201d (32).\u00a0 The steep discount in fast-track programs helps to confirm that the full guidelines sentence is not really necessary to achieve proportionality objectives in illegal reentry cases.\u00a0 This gives sentencing judges a good reason to err on the side of lenience in deciding which set of disparities are most worthwhile to mitigate.<\/p>\n

Cross posted at Life Sentences<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, in United States v. Reyes-Hernandez (No. 09-1249), the Seventh Circuit overruled United States v. Galicia-Cardenas, 443 F.3d 553 (7th Cir. 2006), and held that sentencing judges may consider \u201cthe disparate treatment of immigration defendants that is created by fast-track programs in determining whether a Guidelines sentence is greater than necessary under the \u00a7 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,28,74,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal-justice","category-criminal-law-process","category-federal-sentencing","category-seventh-circuit","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11890\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}