United States v. Michael Deen

706 F.3d 760, 2013 WL 452492, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 2613
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedFebruary 7, 2013
Docket11-2271
StatusPublished
Cited by36 cases

This text of 706 F.3d 760 (United States v. Michael Deen) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Michael Deen, 706 F.3d 760, 2013 WL 452492, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 2613 (6th Cir. 2013).

Opinion

OPINION

JANE B. STRANCH, Circuit Judge.

In the mid-1880s, Victor Hugo is said to have written, “He who opens a school door, closes a prison.” Our national debate about the relationship between education and crime, both in regard to prevention and rehabilitation, has long raged. A part of it — the part that asks whether rehabilitation is a viable penological goal — has been at the heart of Congress’s shaping of the American prison system. A unanimous Supreme Court recently held that the Sentencing Reform Act does not permit a court to “impose or lengthen a prison sentence to enable an offender to complete a treatment program or otherwise to promote rehabilitation.” Tapia v. United *762 States, — U.S. -, 131 S.Ct. 2382, 2393, 180 L.Ed.2d 357 (2011). Tapia involved a defendant’s initial sentencing. This appeal gives us occasion to consider whether that prohibition applies when a court imposes or lengthens a prison term that follows the revocation of supervised release. We conclude that it does. As a result, we VACATE Defendant Michael Deen’s sentence and REMAND for resentencing.

I. BACKGROUND

In 2008, Michael Deen was convicted of distributing five grams or more of cocaine base and sentenced to prison for 66 months, to be followed by four years of supervised release. Deen was released from prison after the custodial portion of his sentence was reduced and began his supervised release term in March 2011.

Five months later, Deen’s probation officer recommended revocation of his supervised release. The district court conducted a revocation hearing in September at which Deen pleaded guilty to violations stemming from two domestic violence incidents, alcohol use, and his failure to report to the probation office and to attend behavioral therapy.

Although the applicable Guidelines’ policy statements recommended imprisonment for four to ten months, Deen’s probation officer suggested a two-year sentence. The government agreed and pushed for “a significant term of imprisonment where [Deen] hopefully can get some treatment for alcohol abuse, and perhaps counseling in terms of anger management [that] would be very helpful for [him].”

The court sentenced Deen to 24 months’ imprisonment, followed by 24 months of supervised release. The judge explained her decision: “[I]t is important to consider whether the goal of rehabilitation, which I think is the end game in terms of the criminal justice system, can be best achieved through incarceration, and it sounds as though maybe it can.” Deen’s violations of his supervised release conditions did not “bode well for simply continuing supervised release.” Instead, an above-range sentence was necessary to “give the Bureau of Prisons another chance to do some in-depth rehabilitation with Mr. Deen.”

In March 2012, Deen and the government jointly requested that this court vacate Deen’s sentence and remand his case to the district court for resentencing in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Tapia. Although Tapia involved a defendant’s initial sentencing, the government and Deen argued that its bar on sentencing decisions based on a defendant’s rehabilitative needs applies equally to supervised-release sentences. Deen’s appeal presents an issue of first impression to which we now turn.

II. ANALYSIS

A. Standard of review

“We review a district court’s sentencing decision under a two-part test, ensuring first ‘that the district court committed no significant procedural error,’ and second that the sentence imposed was substantively reasonable.” United States v. Walker, 649 F.3d 511, 513 (6th Cir.2011) (quoting Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 51, 128 S.Ct. 586, 169 L.Ed.2d 445 (2007)). No procedural errors have been identified here, so we pass only on the substantive reasonableness of Deen’s sentence. Basing a sentence on impermissible factors is an example of substantive unreasonableness, United States v. Webb, 403 F.3d 373, 385 (6th Cir.2005), which we review for abuse of discretion, Gall, 552 U.S. at 41, 128 S.Ct. 586. The standard is the same regardless of whether the sentence was imposed following conviction or, as here, *763 for supervised release violations. United States v. Peebles, 624 F.3d 344, 347 (6th Cir.2010).

B. Statutory framework

Tapia recounts the historical development of federal sentencing laws and the shifting sentiment toward the role of rehabilitation in sentencing that these laws reflect. See 131 S.Ct. at 2386-87. Before 1984, federal law granted district judges wide discretion to craft a defendant’s sentence. Id. at 2386. In doing so, courts could consider a defendant’s amenability to rehabilitation, which was viewed as a sound penological goal that the sentencing decision would further.

Various factors — such as disparities imposed on similarly-situated defendants, changing social attitudes about the wisdom of rehabilitation, and budget constraints— ultimately pushed the concept of rehabilitation into disfavor. The perceived failures of the system led to a sentencing sea change culminating in Congress’s enactment of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 (the Act), Pub.L. No. 98-473, 98 Stat. 1987 (codified as amended at 18 U.S.C. §§ 3551-86), which effectively removed much of the discretion judges enjoyed in fashioning prison sentences. Instead, Congress created the Sentencing Commission to draft guidelines that “would provide courts with ‘a range of determinate sentences for categories of offenses and defendants.’ ” Tapia, 131 S.Ct. at 2387 (quoting Mistretta v. United States, 488 U.S. 361, 368, 109 S.Ct. 647, 102 L.Ed.2d 714 (1989)). And it vested control over where federal prisoners are incarcerated and the rehabilitation programs available to them in the Bureau of Prisons (BOP), the administrator of the national prison system. Though Congress sharply cabined the role of judicial discretion in sentencing, it did not wholly eliminate it.

As explained in Tapia, the Act establishes a “framework to govern [district courts’] consideration and imposition of sentences.” Id. It requires a court to order one or more criminal sanctions — which may include imprisonment (almost always followed by supervised release), probation, or fines — when sentencing a defendant. See 18 U.S.C. § 3551(b).

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Bluebook (online)
706 F.3d 760, 2013 WL 452492, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 2613, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-michael-deen-ca6-2013.