Sentencing — incorrect guideline range — habeas corpus

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United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Criminal

Sentencing — incorrect guideline range — habeas corpus

An error in calculating the applicable guidelines sentencing range can not be corrected in a postconviction proceeding, now that the guidelines are merely advisory rather than, as they formerly were, mandatory.

“Neither should an erroneous interpretation of the guidelines be corrigible in such a proceeding—especially when the interpretation is discovered to be erroneous after the proceeding in which it was committed has become final through exhaustion of appellate remedies. For in such a case the challenge to the judgment depends on the retroactive application of a new rule (the corrected interpretation), and such retroactivity is disfavored because it thwarts finality in the criminal process. Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 308-10 (1989) (plurality opinion). Precedential decisions come pouring out of the federal courts of appeals and the Supreme Court. If every precedential decision interpreting the guidelines favorably to a prisoner were a ticket to being resentenced, the Justice Department and the courts might be forced ‘continually . . . to marshal resources in order to keep in prison defendants whose trials and appeals [and sentences] conformed to then-existing constitutional [and statutory] standards.’ Id. at 310. (It has even been suggested, though we’re skeptical, that judges might be discouraged from proposing new interpretations of the guidelines for fear that federal courts would be inundated with claims for postconviction relief. See John C. Jeffries, Jr., ‘The Right-Remedy Gap in Constitutional Law,’ 109 Yale L.J. 87, 98-99 (1999).) Resentencing is not as heavy a burden for a district court as a complete retrial, but it is a burden, and the cumulative burden of resentencing in a great many stale cases could be considerable. About 80,000 persons are sentenced in federal district courts every year. In every case the judge must calculate a guidelines sentencing range. A change in the interpretation of a guideline could therefore, if always deemed retroactive, greatly increase both the number of section 2255 motions and the number of resentencings. There is a difference between reversing an error on appeal and correcting the error years later. An erroneous computation of an advisory guidelines sentence is reversible (unless harmless) on direct appeal; it doesn’t follow that it’s reversible years later in a postconviction proceeding.”

Affirmed.

11-1245 Hawkins v. U.S.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, Moody, J., Posner, J.