The Booker Error That Wasn’t…
Courtesy of HJB comes this really interesting Second Circuit decision from Wednesday, striking down a sentence imposed by the U.S. Parole Commission on a prisoner convicted in a British court of murder, but transferred to the United States to serve out his sentence. In short, the court found the sentence of life imprisonment imposed by the U.S.P.C. to be unreasonable because it was based on the pre-Booker mandatory-adherence-to-the-guidelines mentality. Nothing out of the ordinary, right?
Well, not really. As the Second Circuit explains (below the fold):
Because Austin’s punishment derives from his violation of English law, he does not enjoy the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury impaired by the mandatory application of the United States Sentencing Guidelines. See United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220, 231-33 (2005). The Parole Commission, however, was never bound by the Guidelines, and is only required to “consider . . . the applicable guideline range” – the standard now familiar to every district court. Compare 18 U.S.C.A. § 4106A(b)(1)(B), with 18 U.S.C.A. § 3553(a), and United States v. Crosby, 397 F.3d 103, 111 (2d Cir. 2005) (“[S]entencing judges remain under . . . the continuing duty to ‘consider’ [the Guidelines], along with the other factors listed in § 3553(a).”). Our post-Booker jurisprudence, therefore, provides a useful analogy for determining whether Austin’s sentence was “imposed in violation of law.”
So, there’s no Booker error; there’s just weird treaty-based, foreign-prisoner-centric, “quasi-Booker” error.
As OMC would put it, “how bizarre, how bizarre.”
One random thought: It strikes me as at least a little interesting that prisoners such as Austin, the defendant in the Second Circuit case, have no Sixth Amendment rights. I guess that makes sense, since the trial wasn’t a U.S. trial. But what about the rest of the panoply of constitutional protections? Is the law different for transferred prisoners?
Posted by Steve Vladeck on April 21, 2006 at 09:37 AM
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Comments
The law is definitely different for transferred prisoners. I picture the fiction is that they are in fact serving out the remainder of their (lawfully imposed) sentence, in the same jurisdiction that sentenced them – but they happen to physically be located closer to home. If it was lawfully imposed, then the opportunities for collateral attack are much diminished – and most states, reasonably wanting the people they convict to stay convicted, insist on a knowing waiver of appeal rights, in return for the benefit.
And a big benefit it is, too – many Americans get jailed in Mexico (proximity) as well as a lesser number in such garden spots as Thailand and Turkey, and would otherwise be stuck, either far from home, or in a spot with inferior standards of health. Or standards of cruelty towards prisoners.
Link to info from the State Dept.
Posted by: Eh Nonymous | Apr 21, 2006 10:51:49 AM