Supreme Court to interpret sentencing guidelines ruling
Submitted on February 20, 2007 - 5:49pm.
Kayla Webley
Scripps Howard Foundation Wire
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court heard two cases Tuesday about how to interpret an earlier decision that made criminal sentencing guidelines advisory.
The arguments questioned how the decision - made two years ago - should be applied. The court ruled in United States v. Booker in 2005 that mandatory federal sentencing guidelines violated the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury by giving judges, rather than juries, the job of determining the length of sentence.
To avoid invalidating the guidelines completely, the court then made the guidelines “advisory,” and directed judges to review sentences for their “reasonableness.”
One of the cases argued Tuesday, Rita v. United States, questioned the reasonableness of Victor Rita’s sentence. A retired Marine and former criminal investigator for the immigration service, Rita, 57, is in poor health due to injuries he sustained while fighting in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf War.
He was convicted of obstructing justice and making false statements in a federal grand jury investigation about the sale of kits for making machine guns. At his trial, his lawyer argued for a sentence below the 33- to 41-month range recommended by the sentence guidelines because of his background. The trial judge imposed a 33-month sentence, a decision later upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va.
In the second case, Claiborne v. United States, Mario Claiborne, then 20, pleaded guilty to possessing and distributing cocaine. Under the sentencing guidelines, Claiborne was to receive 37 to 46 months in jail.
The district court judge felt the minimum sentence was too high, given the small amount of drugs involved and the likelihood that Claiborne would not commit similar crimes in the future.
The judge said a 37-month sentence would be equivalent to throwing Claiborne away and instead gave him 15 months plus three years on probation.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in St. Louis reversed that decision. It said a sentence 60 percent lower than the low end of the sentencing guidelines could be justified only by extraordinary circumstances, which the judge did not find.
Claiborne has already served the 15 months. If the Supreme Court upholds the Eighth Circuit’s decision, he would face re-sentencing and a possible return to prison.
Rita’s lawyer, Thomas Cochran, assistant federal public defender from Greensboro, N.C., said the district court judge did not take into account Rita’s military background or health concerns or offer specific reasons for the sentence.
“How can you say that?” asked Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who said the information was brought out in the trial and the judge didn’t have to mention it at sentencing.
Justice Stephen Breyer agreed it wasn’t necessary for a judge to state all factors contributing to a ruling. Breyer said his main question was about how free a judge should feel to deviate from the advisory guidelines.
“How much weight can a judge give guidelines without violating the Sixth Amendment,” Breyer asked.
In the Claiborne case, Michael Dwyer, an assistant federal public defender from St. Louis, said the district court judge had given a reasonable sentence by consulting the guidelines and then treating Claiborne as an individual.
Several justices noted that Congress established the guidelines in the 1984 Sentencing Reform Act to prevent disparities among cases. The justices said that if every case were treated individually there would be a greater chance that inequalities would arise.
“It would be essentially a lawless system,” Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. said. “There has to be a background to it so you know people usually get this sentence.”
The court’s decision is expected by the end of June.
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