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Appellant Stumbles at Step Three of the Plain Error Pavane

By Tom Lincoln

Everything was going so well as counsel was engaged in his plain error pavane. Then came that difficult third step and he stumbled. The Court decided there would be no Booker remand for resentencing, as the District Court (Cerezo, J.) had made it abundantly clear that her intent was to punish appellant harshly (the guidelines, without any downward departure, would have allowed Judge Cerezo to impose an aggregate sentence as low as 360 months for the grouped counts, and she chose to sentence appellant to nearly double that amount of prison time ? a total of 600 months), even if she had operated under mandatory sentencing guidelines. See United States v. González-Mercado, No. 03-2173 (1st Cir. April 1, 2005). The pavane, for the very few who do not know, is "a slow, stately court dance of the 16th and 17th centuries, usually in duple meter...continue to full post

Full post as published by Puerto Rico Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers on April 06, 2005 (boomark / email).