United States v. Samuel Eaton

607 F. App'x 689

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Decided: June 4, 2015
• Docket: 14-50103
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

MEMORANDUM ***

Samuel Eaton appeals from his resen-tencing by the district court pursuant to his convictions on two counts of bank larceny, 18 U.S.C. § 2113(b). We review his challenge to the sentence de novo, United States v. Garcia-Guizar, 234 F.3d 483, 489 n. 2 (9th Cir.2000), and affirm. Because the parties are familiar with the history of the case, we need not recount it here.

I

The district court was not required to impose the sixty-month “alternative sentence” on remand following our reversal of Eaton’s convictions under 18 U.S.C. § 844 in the previous appeal. Our remand order in that appeal was open-ended and, unlike in' any of the eases Eaton cites, did not direct the district court to impose the alternative sentence it had previously considered. The district court was therefore free to undertake a new sentencing analysis without regard to its earlier sentencing determinations. See United States v. Ponce, 51 F.3d 820, 825-26 (9th Cir.1995) (concluding that the “district court did not err in resentencing [the defendants] without regard to its previous [sentencing] determinations” because the disposition in the prior appeal simply “vacated the [original] sentences and remanded for resen-tencing” without elaboration); United States v. Caterino, 29 F.3d 1390, 1395 (9th Cir.1994) (concluding that, absent “clear evidence to the contrary,” a disposition vacating a defendant’s sentence and remanding for resentencing “should be read as granting a general rather than limited remand to the district court”), overruled on other grounds by Witte v. United States, 515 U.S. 389, 115 S.Ct. 2199, 132 L.Ed.2d 351 (1995).

II

The district court’s decision to impose a sentence greater than sixty months at Eaton’s resentencing hearing was not motivated by vindictiveness and did not violate his due process rights.

The district court explained that it was imposing the eighty-month sentence instead of the sixty-month “alternative sentence” because the sixty-month sentence was based on an erroneous analysis of the sentencing factors in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). This explanation was sufficient to avoid a presumption of vindictiveness. Even assuming the presumption arose, this explanation rebuts that presumption. As we have recognized, a district court may impose a higher sentence on a defendant at resentencing, without violating due process, where the “higher sentence resulted solely from the district court’s correction of an error” in its prior sentencing analysis. Garcia-Guizar, 234 F.3d at 489; see also Ponce, 51 F.3d at 826 (finding no “authority for the proposition that due process is violated where a court reexamines all aspects of a sentence following a successful appeal of a prior sentence and a general remand”).

AFFIRMED.

*** This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by 9 th Cir. R. 36-3.