U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement urged the Supreme Court on Tuesday to grant review in a new Sentencing Guidelines case replacing one that has been ordered vacated, and suggested that the new case could be decided before the Court finishes the current Term, perhaps later this month. The document can be found here.
In a “supplemental memorandum,” Clement recommended that the Court review the case of Beal v. U.S. (docket 06-8498) since it raises the issue that was before the Court in Claiborne v. U.S. (06-5618) — a case that was nearing a decision, until the individual involved, Mario Claiborne, died. The Court on Monday ordered the Eighth Circuit Court to vacate that case as moot.
“The status of reasonableness review is perhaps the most pressing legal issue facing federal criminal justice today,” Clement asserted.
The SG argued in his new filing that “the federal criminal justice system would greatly benefit from this Court’s consideration of the merits of this case on an expedited basis. If the Court wishes to render a decision this Term, the parties have agreed to a proposed schedule for expedited briefing that would permit the Court to do so.” The suggested schedule would have both sides file simultaneous 20-page briefs by Friday, June 15. The case could then go to the Court on those briefs, unless the Court asked for reply briefs or called for oral argument, Clement suggested. If the Court opts not to move that speedily, he added, it could grant review and set the case for argument as early as feasible in the new Term opening Oct. 1.
The new filing urged the Court to consider the new case at its Conference on Thursday of this week, with a grant order being announced on Friday — thus allowing a week for briefs to be prepared and filed.
The Beal petition can be found here. The Eighth Circuit’s decision in that case can be found here.
The Beal case, the Solicitor General told the Court, “arises from the same judicial circuit as Claiborne and involves a court of appeals’ decision reversing a downward variance after applying the same legal principles as in Claiborne, viz., that ‘the farther the district court varies from the presumptively reasonable guidelines range, the more compelling the justification…must be.”
“The federal criminal justice system,” the memorandum argued, “has a great need for this Court’s guidance concernign the nature of scope of review of out-of-guidelines sentences under [U.S. v.] Booker. This Court’s own docket reflects a number of cases that raise this issue, but the dockets of the courts of appeals contain a far greater number of cases whose resolution depends on the legal principles that this Court announces. Many of those cases are being held pending the Court’s decisions on the issues it granted certiorari to decide in Rita [v. U.S.] and Claiborne. The backlog will continue to grow if this Court is unable to address the proportionality principle until next Term. In addition, this Court’s analysis of the reasonableness of out-of-range sentences will almost certainly have a significant impact on day-to-day sentences in the district courts and the government’s decisions on which cases to appeal. In light of the reality that the federal district courts sentence more than 70,000 defendants each fiscal year, and that, in fiscal year 2006, approximately 14 percent of those cases reflected variances under Booker, the impact of this Court’s decisions will be considerable.”
While the Solicitor General said that the Court has other cases pending on the docket that present similar issues, “none provides a better vehicle than Beal for resolution of the questions the Court granted review to consider in Claiborne.” The Court has at least two dozen cases on its docket that raise the same issue as Claiborne.
The memorandum added: “Both Claiborne and Beal involve drug offenses (the most common offense sentenced in the federal system) and both involve substantial variances based on the district courts’ belief that the advisory sentencing range was excessive in light of the purposes of sentencing. The district court in each case also focused on the defendant’s criminal history and drew a comparison with other cases the court had sentenced, as grounds for varying from the range.”
In the new case, Terrance Beal pleaded guilty to a charge of distributing cocaine, based on the sale of 4.8 grams to an undercover officer on October 9, 2003. At his arrest, officers recovered a total of 11 grams of cocaine base from his person. Because of two prior state court felony convictions for drug crimes, Beal faced sentencing as a career offender under the federal Sentencing Guidelines. Ultimately, his Guideline range was 188 to 235 months in prison. Finding that Beal was not the “most hardened criminal,” and that it would be “overkill” to rely on the career offender guideline, a federal District judge chose to set the actual sentence at 84 months — 104 months below the lowest point in the range. The federal government appealed, and the Eighth Circuit overturned that sentence as unreasonable.
The pending Rita case — the other Guidelines case that the Court is close to deciding — “will illuminate the proper analysis of within-range sentences,” the Solicitor General commented but then added that “it seems unlikely that the facts of Rita would allow the Court to explicate the standards for appellate review of outside-the-range sentences. Yet a proper understanding of those standards is critical to the functioning not only of federal appellate review but also of district court sentencing.”
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