Ruling: Legal or Discretionary? Flashcards
How could the district court have applied the wrong law? After all, the court agreed with you that 1B1.13 was nonbinding.
Sure, your honor. So, in understanding the district court’s ruling here, I think it’s helpful to distinguish two separate questions. The first question is whether 1B1.13 is binding and, thus, whether the district court is limited to those reasons. Separate and apart from whether 1B1.13 is binding, however, there arises the question of whether there are any other legal limits, independent of 1B1.13, on what courts may consider in the “extraordinary and compelling analysis.” The Seventh Circuit, for example, has split on these questions. It recognized in Gunn that 1B1.13 is nonbinding, but it nevertheless held as a matter of law that courts may not consider the First Step Act’s Amendments.
- Here, the district court came to the correct conclusion on the 1B1.13 questions. It held that 1B1.13 is nonbinding. But it came to the wrong answer on the other question. It held categorically that a redressible legal error could not be extraordinary and compelling.
- [Segue to outline] And we know that the district court’s ruling was a categorical, legal ruling by applying the test in Gazca-Ruiz.
It seems to me that the district court’s order could be read either way. Maybe it’s a legal ruling, but maybe it’s just an exercise of discretion. Shouldn’t we assume that district courts follow the law and affirm?
No, your honor. When this Court isn’t sure whether the district court committed legal error, this Court sends the case back for further explanation.
Out of circuit: United States v. Hampton, 985 F.3d 530, 531 (6th Cir. 2021)
In circuit: United States v. Cisneros, 851 F. App’x 785, 786 (9th Cir. 2021) (vacating and remanding when it was “unclear” whether the district court violated Aruda); United States v. Cross, 849 F. App’x 192 (9th Cir. 2021) (same).
Cf. Lizararras-Chacon at *6. (“It is not clear from the record that the district court recognized that it had the discretion to consider relevant developments in the law in a § 3553(a) factor analysis. . . . Because the record is not clear, remand is necessary.”)
What makes you think that this is a legal ruling, not an exercise of discretion?
This Court’s decision in Gazca-Ruiz governs whether a ruling is discertionary or legal.
A district court makes a legal ruling when “when, in the course of rendering its decision, the district court formulates or adopts a generalized rule that will apply to an entire class of cases, not just to the case at hand.” Gazca-Ruiz at 1171.
That’s what the district court did here. The court said that it was not persuaded that the extraordinary and compelling standard
Can be satisfied (categorical)
By claims of legal error (plural) that are redressible on direct review or habeas.
Then the court quoted Lisi for the proposition that that recognizing such claims would be “improper and inconsistent with the First Step Act,” itself legal reasoning that sweeps beyond that case at hand.
But didn’t you already argue in your opening brief about “what the law is”? I mean, you wrote a voluminous brief defending the idea that legal errors are appropriate considerations for compassionate release. So, if the government is prepared to have us decide the question, then what’s the problem?
The problem is that while we’ve been able to make the affirmative case for considering unusually long sentences, we haven’t gotten the opportunity to to address counter arguments. Because the government made the strategic decision not to make any of the arguments adopted in Thacker, Hunter, or Andrews, we did not get a fair opportunity to respond to those arguments.
It would be unfair to Heine and Yates to resolve those disputes on the basis of a theory that was not advanced by the government and that they have not had an opportunity to address. Nor is there any basis for remanding to give the government an opportunity for a do-over after it made the strategic choice not to address all of the defendants’ arguments in its appellate brief.United States v. Yates, ___ F.4th ___ 2021 WL 4699251, at *10 (9th Cir. Oct. 8, 2021).
If your honors decide to reach this issue, we’d request supplemental briefing.
But you knew about those cases, didn’t you? And yet you didn’t raise them? You thought they’d just slip under the radar?
Your honor, it is my understanding that your honors prefer that parties limit reply briefs to respond to whatever arguments the appellee made in their answering brief. Here, the government made the strategic decision not to contest the underlying law. But the government nevertheless wrote a lengthy response brief raising a wide range of other issues. So the problem wasn’t just that we took at face value the governments decision not to contest the underlying law, but it was also that we had to devote the space in our reply brief to addressing the many arguments the government did raise.
If your honor does wish to rule on the underlying law, we would request supplemental briefing on this issue.
What makes you think the government’s choice not to raise these arguments was strategic? The cases the government submitted in its 28(j) came out only after briefing concluded.
Yes, your honor, but the government had ample notice that it could have made the arguments in Thacker, Hunter, and Andrews, but it declined to do so. McCoy, Manmau, and McGee, which considered the kinds of arguments the government now seeks to raise, all preceded the government’s answering brief. So the government knew that these arguments were on the table. But, perhaps recognizing that all the case let up to that point was favorable to Mr. Weller’s position, the government chose not to make those arguments here. The government should not be able to reverse that strategic decision just because other cases came out going the government’s way.
But in context, the court was addressing the facts of your client’s particular case. So shouldn’t we read the court’s ruling through that lens, and assume that the court was just describing the particular claim your client raised
No, your honor. Gasca-Ruiz recognizes that even when considering individual cases, district courts sometimes decide the case by adopting a categorical, generalized, legal rules.
• [Segue to outline] And applying the test from Gasca-Ruiz, that’s exactly what the court did here.
Can a district court decide as a discretionary matter that it is never going to recognize a legal error as an extraordinary and compelling reason, even if the statute allows it to?
Before I answer your honor’s question, I just want to note that your honor’s hypothetical doesn’t reflect what happened here. Evaluating the district court’s order through the lens of Gasca-Ruiz, the court made a legal ruling, not a discretionary one.
- But to answer the question, no, a district court may not adopt a one-size-fits-all policy that it will never grant relief for legal errors, no matter the circumstances. That flows directly from Gasca-Ruiz. Gasca-Ruiz holds that “any error in formulating or adopting a rule of general application necessarily results in a failure to identify the correct legal standard.” In other words, district courts do not have discretion to identify generalized rules applicable to all sentencing decisions. District courts only have discretion to make individualized sentencing decisions.
- We can see this play out in a case like United States v. Barker, 771 F.2d 1362, 1365 (9th Cir. 1985). There, this court held that adopting a certain policy of always sentencing people convicted of drug offenses the same way was an abuse of sentencing discretion. That’s because the analysis is supposed to be holistic and individualized. The same can be said of compassionate release.
What’s up with your RDAP argument? Are you abandoning that one?
No, your honor, we still contend that that is a legal ruling.
[Gasca-Ruiz test]
Here, the district court stated that Mr. Weller’s disqualification from RDAP was not a “qualitative factor.” That was not a ruling about how RDAP related to the individual facts of Mr. Weller’s case. Instead, the court indicated that RDAP did not factor in to the extraordinary and compelling analysis at all. But many courts have used RDAP as one fact among many to support extraordinary and compelling reasons, and there is no legal support for the notion that RDAP cannot factor in to the analysis. The district court therefore made an erroneous legal ruling.
