US v. Ibarra-Luna, No. 09-40768

Illegal Reentry Sentence Vacated

In US v. Ibarra-Luna, No. 09-40768, the court vacated defendant's illegal reentry sentence where, under the discretionary sentencing regime of Booker and its progeny, the harmless error doctrine applied only if the proponent of the sentence convincingly demonstrated both: 1) that the district court would have imposed the same sentence had it not made the error, and 2) that it would have done so for the same reasons it gave at the prior sentencing, and defendant's sentence did not meet this standard.

As the court wrote:  "In United States v. Morales-Sanchez, we held that a district court must
always "correctly calculat[e] the applicable Guidelines range" before imposing a sentence. Today we address whether a sentence may be upheld if an error in the calculation is shown to be harmless. We hold that under the discretionary sentencing regime of Booker and progeny, the harmless error doctrine applies only if the proponent of the sentence convincingly demonstrates both (1) that the district court would have imposed the same sentence had it not made the error, and (2) that it would have done so for the same reasons it gave at the prior
sentencing."

Related Resources

• Read the Second Circuit's Decision in US v. Ibarra-Luna, No. 09-40768