United States v. Bigley, No. 12-3022 (D.C. Cir. 2015)
Annotate this CaseDefendant pled guilty to one count of interstate travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor and was sentenced to 84 months' imprisonment. On appeal, defendant contended that the district court committed procedural error by failing to address his nonfrivolous sentencing manipulation argument when imposing the sentence. The court held that the Supreme Court’s post-Booker decisions required sentencing courts to consider nonfrivolous mitigation arguments at sentencing. When a judge fails to address a defendant’s nonfrivolous mitigation claim based on a 18 U.S.C. 3553(a) sentencing factor, a reviewing court and the public cannot adequately evaluate the judge’s sentence selection. Moreover, where, as here, a district court may have thought it was prohibited, as a matter of law, from considering a claim for mitigation, the error seriously affects the public reputation of judicial proceedings. Accordingly, the court concluded that the district court committed plain error by failing to consider defendant's nonfrivolous mitigation argument and the court vacated the sentence, remanding for further proceedings.
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