Court rules on Sentencing Guidelines
on Jun 21, 2007 at 10:03 am
The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that a federal criminal sentence within the Guidelines may be presumed to be reasonable when the case is on appeal. However, it said that such a presumption is not binding.. Although the Court was divided in some respects, the vote on the result was 8-1 with only Justice David H. Souter dissenting in Rita v. U.S. (06-5754).
The decision dealt only with a standard for within-Guidelines range sentences. It did not address below-range sentencing — an issue that it will be considering in its next Term, starting Oct.1 in the case of Gall v. U.S. (06-7949), granted review on June 11.
In discussing its conclusion that such a presumption is not binding, Justice Stephen G. Breyer’s main opinion said: “The presumption…does not, like a trial-related evidentiary presumption, insist that one side, or the other, shoulder a particular burden of pesuasion or proof lest they lose the case…Nor does the presumption reflect strong judicial deference of the kind that leads appeals courts to grant greater factfinding leeway to an expert agency than to a district judge. Rather, the presumption reflects the fact that, by the time an appeals court is considering a within-Guidelines sentence on review, both the sentencing judge and the Sentencing Commission will have reached the same conclusion as to the proper sentence in the particular case. That double determination significantly increases the likelihood that the sentence is a reasonable one. Further, the presumption reflects the nature of the Guidelines-writing task that Congress set for the Commission and the manner in which the Commission carried out that task.”
The Court added: “A non-binding appellate presumption that a Guidelines sentence is reasonable does not require the sentencing judge to impose that sentence. Still less does it forbid the sentencing judge from imposing a sentence higher than the Guidelines provide for the jury-determined facts standing alone. As far as the law is concerned, the judge could disregard the Guidelines and apply the same sentence (higher than the statutory minimum or the bottom of the unenhanced Guidelines range) in the absence of the special facts (say, gun brandishing) which, in the view of the Sentencing Commission, would warrant a higher sentence within the statutorily permissible range. Thus, our Sixth Amendment cases do not forbid appellate court use of the presumption.”
In the second ruling of the day on the merits, the Court clarified the standard for inferences of innocence that courts may consider in a private securities lawsuit to determine whether the sued individual or firm acted with intent to commit wrong. The 8-1 decision in Tellabs v. Makor Issues & Rights (06-484) said that, to qualify as strong, an inference of awareness of wrongdoing must be “more than merely plausible or reasonable — it must be cogent and at least as compelling as any opposing inference” of a lack of intent to defraud.
In the third and final ruling of the day, the Court decided that it does not violate the First Amendment for a state prep sports group to enforce a no-recruiting rule on prep athletes. The decision in Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association v. Brentwood Academy (06-427) was based in significant part on the voluntary choice of the Academy to join in the state association that writes rules for school sports competition.
