Tuesday, January 03, 2012

Tenth Voices Antagonism to Ninth Circuit Decision that Held a Within-guidelines Sentence to be Unreasonable

U.S. v. Carrillo-Rodriguez, 2011 WL 6242550 (12/15/11) (Col.) (unpub'd) - The 10th exhibits a strong antagonism for the 9th Circuit's decision in U.S. v. Vasquez-Alcarez, 647 F.3d 973 (9th Cir. 2011), holding a within-guideline-range reentry sentence substantively unreasonable. The 10th says its approach to substantive reasonableness issues "differs in significant ways" from the 9th's, noting only one difference: the 10th applies a presumption of reasonableness to within-guideline-range sentences. Nonetheless, the 10th says that "even assuming for the sake of argument Amezcua-Vasquez is persuasive," the defendant's circumstances differed from those of Mr. Amezcua-Vasquez in that his last offense was immediately prior to his reentry conviction , [as opposed to 7 years before], he twice committed the intentional property crime of theft, [as opposed to never harming anyone for 20 years], the defendant had a chance to demonstrate his relative harmlessness because he was not arrested for years after his reentry, [as opposed to being arrested during an attempted reentry], and the defendant's deportable offense was a deportable offense at the time he committed it, [as opposed to an offense that was declared an aggravated felony after commission].