Burns v. United States

• Decision Date: 13 June 1991
• Docket Number: No. 89-7260,89-7260
• Citation: 115 L.Ed.2d 123,111 S.Ct. 2182,501 U.S. 129
• Parties: William J. BURNS, Petitioner v. UNITED STATES
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

501 U.S. 129

111 S.Ct. 2182

115 L.Ed.2d 123

William J. BURNS, Petitioner

v UNITED STATES.

No. 89-7260.

Argued Dec. 3, 1990.

Decided June 13, 1991.

Syllabus

A plea agreement with the Government recited that petitioner Burns would plead guilty to three counts and stated the parties' expectation that his sentence would fall within a particular offense-level/criminal-history range under the United States Sentencing Commission's Guidelines. The probation officer, as required by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32, filed a presentence report in which he confirmed the parties' expectation that the sentencing range would be 30 to 37 months and concluded that there were no factors that would warrant departure from the Guidelines sentence. Although neither party filed any objections to the report, the District Court announced, at the end of the sentencing hearing, that it was departing upward from the Guidelines range and, based upon three grounds, sentenced Burns to 60 months' imprisonment. The Court of Appeals affirmed the sentence, concluding that, although subdivision (a)(1) of Rule 32 requires a district court to afford the parties "an opportunity to comment upon the probation officer's determination and on other matters relating to the appropriate sentence" at the sentencing hearing, it would be inappropriate to impose on a district court a requirement that it notify the parties of its intent to make a sua sponte departure from the Guidelines in the absence of express language to that effect.

Held: Before a district court can depart upward from the applicable Guidelines range on a ground not identified as a ground for such departure either in the presentence report or in a prehearing submission by the Government, Rule 32 requires that the court give the parties reasonable notice that it is contemplating such a ruling, specifically identifying the ground for the departure. Pp. 132-139.

(a) In order to eliminate the unwarranted disparities and uncertainty associated with indeterminate sentencing under the pre-existing system, the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 requires district courts to determine sentences based on the various offense- and offender-related factors identified by the Guidelines. Under the Act, a district court may disregard the Guidelines' mechanical dictates only upon finding an aggravating or mitigating circumstance not adequately considered by the Commission. The Act amended Rule 32 to assure focused, adversarial development of the factual and legal issues relevant to determining the appropriate Guidelines sentence. Although, ordinarily, the presentence report or the Government's recommendation will notify the defendant that an upward departure will be at issue and of the facts that allegedly support it, that will not be the case where, as here, the district court departs sua sponte from the Guidelines sentencing range. Pp. 132-135.

(b) The textual and contextual evidence of legislative intent indicates that Congress did not intend a district court to depart from the Guidelines sua sponte without first affording notice to the parties. The Government's contrary reading renders meaningless the parties' express right under Rule 32(a)(1) to "comment upon [relevant] matters," since the right to comment upon a departure has little reality or worth unless one is informed that a decision is contemplated. The Government's reading is also inconsistent with Rule 32's purpose. Under the Government's interpretation of Rule 32, a critical sentencing determination would go untested by the adversarial process in every case in which the parties, lacking notice, failed to anticipate an unannounced and uninvited departure by the district court from the Guidelines. Furthermore, the meaning that the Government attaches to Congress' silence is contrary to decisions in which, despite the absence of express statutory language, this Court has construed statutes authorizing analogous deprivations of liberty or property to require that the Government give affected individuals both notice and a meaningful opportunity to be heard. See, e.g., American Power & Light Co. v. SEC, 329 U.S. 90, 107-108, 67 S.Ct. 133, 143-144, 91 L.Ed. 103. Since the Government's interpretation would require this Court to confront the serious question whether notice is mandated by the Due Process Clause, the Court will not construe Rule 32 to dispense with notice in this setting absent a clear statement of congressional intent to that effect. See, e.g., Edward J. DeBartolo Corp. v. Florida Gulf Coast Building and Construction Trades Council, 485 U.S. 568, 575, 108 S.Ct. 1392, 1397, 99 L.Ed.2d 645. Pp. 135-138.

282 U.S.App.D.C. 194, 893 F.2d 1343 (1990), reversed and remanded.

MARSHALL, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BLACKMUN, STEVENS, SCALIA, and KENNEDY, JJ., joined. SOUTER, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which WHITE and O'CONNOR, JJ., joined, and in Part I of which REHNQUIST, C.J., joined.

Steven H. Goldblatt, for petitioner.

Stephen J. Marzen, for respondent.

Justice MARSHALL delivered the opinion of the Court.

The question in this case is whether a district court may depart upward from the sentencing range established by the Sentencing Guidelines without first notifying the parties that it intends to depart. We hold that it may not.

I

Petitioner William Burns was employed by the United States Agency for International Development (AID) from 1967 until 1988. Between 1982 and 1988, petitioner used his position as a supervisor in the agency's Financial Management Section to authorize payment of AID funds into a bank account controlled by him in the name of a fictitious person. During this period, 53 fraudulent payments totaling over $1.2 million were paid into the account.

Following the Government's detection of this scheme, petitioner agreed to plead guilty to a three-count information charging him with theft of Government funds, 18 U.S.C. § 641, making false claims against the Government, 18 U.S.C. § 287, and attempted tax evasion, 26 U.S.C. § 7201. The plea agreement stated the parties' expectation that petitioner would be sentenced within the Guidelines range corresponding to an offense level of 19 and a criminal history category of I.

The probation officer confirmed this expectation in his presentence report and found the applicable sentencing range to be 30 to 37 months. The report also concluded: "There are no factors that would warrant departure from the guideline sentence." App. 21. Both petitioner and the Government reviewed the presentence report, and neither party filed any objections to it.

Nonetheless, at the conclusion of the sentencing hearing, the District Court announced that it was departing upward from the Guidelines sentencing range. The District Court set forth three reasons for the departure: (1) the extensive duration of petitioner's criminal conduct; (2) the disruption to governmental functions caused by petitioner's criminal conduct; and (3) petitioner's use of his tax evasion offense to conceal his theft and false claims offenses. Based upon these considerations, the District Court sentenced petitioner to 60 months' imprisonment.

On appeal, petitioner argued that Rule 32 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure obliged the District Court to furnish advance notice of its intent to depart from the Guidelines. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected petitioner's contention and affirmed his sentence. The court observed that, although subdivision (a)(1) of Rule 32 requires the district court to afford the parties "an opportunity to comment upon . . . matters relating to the appropriate sentence" at the sentencing hearing, the Rule contains no express language requiring a district court to notify the parties of its intent to make sua sponte departures from the Guidelines. The court determined that it would be inappropriate to impose such a requirement on district courts in the absence of such express statutory language. See 282 U.S.App.D.C. 194, 199, 893 F.2d 1343, 1348 (1990).

By contrast, several other Circuits have concluded that Rule 32 does require a district court to provide notice of its intent sua sponte to depart upward from an applicable Guidelines sentencing range.¹ We granted certiorari to resolve this conflict. 497 U.S. ----, 110 S.Ct. 3270, 111 L.Ed.2d 780 (1990). We now reverse.

II

A.

The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 revolutionized the manner in which district courts sentence persons convicted of federal crimes. See generally Mistretta v. United States, 488 U.S. 361, 363-367, 109 S.Ct. 647, 649-652, 102 L.Ed.2d 714 (1989). Before the Act, Congress was generally content to define broad sentencing ranges leaving the imposition of sentences within those ranges to the discretion of individual judges, to be exercised on a case-by-case basis. Now, under the "guidelines" system initiated by the Act, district court judges determine sentences based on the various offense-related and offender-related factors identified by the Guidelines of the United States Sentencing Commission. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 3553(a)(4), (b). The purpose of this reform was to eliminate the "unwarranted disparit[ies] and . . . uncertainty" associated with indeterminate sentencing. See, e.g., S.Rep. No. 98-225, p. 49 (1983). The only circumstance in which the district court can disregard the mechanical dictates of the Guidelines is when it finds "that there exists an aggravating or mitigating circumstance of a kind, or to a degree, not adequately taken into consideration by the Sentencing Commission. . . ." 18 U.S.C. § 3553(b).

Procedural reforms, too, were necessary to achieve Congress' goal of assuring "certainty and fairness" in sentencing. See 28 U.S.C. § 991(b)(1)(B). As the Commission has explained:

"In pre-guidelines practice, factors relevant to sentencing were often determined in an informal fashion. The informality was to some extent explained by the fact that...