United States v. Montgomery, No. 19-6038 (6th Cir. 2020)

The Sixth Circuit earlier held that the district court miscalculated the Sentencing Guidelines range for Mongtomery’s sentencing, but explained that “the record shows that the district court would have imposed its sentence regardless of the Guidelines range” and the error was harmless. One feature of the sentencing hearing was that the court stated, “If the guideline calculation is determined to have been wrong, the Court would have imposed the same sentence under Section 3553(a) considering those factors as a whole.” Montgomery noted that the statement is part of the standard sentencing colloquy, even in cases where the parties do not object to the Guidelines calculation.

The Sixth Circuit denied a rehearing while acknowledging that there is no reason to give any weight to boiler-plate language designed to thwart a deserved resentencing. The purpose of harmless-error analysis is to avoid resentencing in cases where the district court certainly would have announced the same sentence had it not erred..That aim is not served by a standard-issue pledge that the district court would have come to the same result under section 3553(a) had it calculated the Guidelines range correctly. Montgomery brought the argument too late so that it is inappropriate for consideration. The court issued an opinion “to voice our skepticism that a standard sentencing colloquy like the one at issue here should weigh into our harmless-error analysis in future cases.”