United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 06-2216
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Appellant,
v.
TALMUS R. TAYLOR,
Defendant, Appellee.
ON REMAND FROM THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Before
Lynch, Chief Judge,
Newman* and Torruella, Circuit Judges.
John A. Capin, Assistant United States Attorney, Michael J.
Sullivan, United States Attorney, and Paul G. Levenson, Assistant
United States Attorney, on supplemental brief for appellant.
Bruce T. Macdonald on supplemental brief for appellee.
July 9, 2008
*
Of the Federal Circuit, sitting by designation.
TORRUELLA, Circuit Judge. Talmus Taylor was sentenced to
one year in a halfway house, five years of probation, and a $10,000
fine, for aiding and assisting in the preparation of false tax
returns, in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 7206(2). Following an appeal
by the Government, we vacated the sentence as substantively
unreasonable and remanded to the district court. See United
States v. Taylor, 499 F.3d 94 (1st Cir. 2007), vacated, 128 S. Ct.
878 (2008). The case returns to us on remand from the Supreme
Court for further consideration in light of Gall v. United States,
128 S. Ct. 586 (2007).
The Court's decision in Gall, combined with its decisions
in Kimbrough v. United States, 128 S. Ct. 558 (2007), and Rita v.
United States, 127 S. Ct. 2456 (2007), makes clear that in the
post-Booker world, district judges are empowered with considerable
discretion in sentencing, as long as the sentence is generally
reasonable and the court has followed the proper procedures. In
accordance with these decisions, our recent opinions have
elaborated on the broad scope of this discretion. See, e.g.,
United States v. Martin, 520 F.3d 87 (1st Cir. 2008); see also
United States v. Rodríguez, 527 F.3d 221 (1st Cir. 2008); United
States v. Politano, 522 F.3d 69 (1st Cir. 2008). Recently, in
another sentencing case vacated by Gall, we noted this expanded
discretion and concluded that the fairest course of action was to
provide the district court the opportunity to reconsider its
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sentence in view of the Supreme Court's elucidation of sentencing
procedures, as well as some of the concerns we had expressed in the
prior opinion. See United States v. Tom, No. 07-1074, 2008 WL
1886608 (1st Cir. Apr. 30, 2008) (unpublished). We think that
course appropriate under the circumstances here as well.
In so doing, we first reiterate some of the important
sentencing principles underscored in all of these recent decisions.
As clearly outlined in Gall, we review a district court's sentence
under a deferential abuse of discretion standard, which involves
both a procedural and a substantive inquiry. See Gall, 128 S. Ct.
at 597; see also Politano, 522 F.3d at 72. This deference arises
from the advantages inherent in the district court's position: "a
superior coign of vantage, greater familiarity with the individual
case, the opportunity to see and hear the principals and the
testimony at first hand, and the cumulative experience garnered
through the sheer number of district court sentencing proceedings
that take place day by day." Martin, 520 F.3d at 92. Indeed, once
the district court has followed the proper procedures, our review
of substantive reasonableness is highly discretionary. See id.
("[R]eversal will result if – and only if - the sentencing court's
ultimate determination falls outside the expansive boundaries of
that universe [of reasonableness].").
Yet, along with this increased discretion to fashion an
appropriate sentence goes an accompanying "need for an increased
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degree of justification commensurate with an increased degree of
variance." Martin, 520 F.3d at 91. To be clear, there is no
strict formula for determining the bounds of an appropriate
sentence, but there is "a certain 'sliding scale' effect [that]
lurks in the penumbra of modern federal sentencing law; the
guidelines are the starting point for the fashioning of an
individualized sentence, so a major deviation from them must 'be
supported by a more significant justification than a minor one.'"
Id. (quoting Gall, 128 S. Ct. at 597).
In our prior review of the sentence in this case, we
expressed concern that the district court had failed to take all of
the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factors into account in fashioning the
defendant's entirely non-jail sentence for such a serious crime.
Our conclusion was not based on any requirement that the
justification be "proportional" to the deviation or that the result
comply with a mathematic formula defining the outer bounds of
reasonableness. Rather, it was that in our view, the court's
explanations had failed to justify the overall result.
As in Tom, a ruling on the sentence based on the present
record would not fully actualize Gall's effect in "shed[ding]
considerable light on the scope and extent of a district court's
discretion under the now-advisory federal sentencing guidelines."
Martin, 520 F.3d at 88. Given the intervening cases which have
further elucidated the district court's discretion in sentencing
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(as well as underscored the importance of the district court's
justifications for that sentence), we think it best to remand to
the district court for reconsideration with the benefit of all of
these developments, as well as the concerns we expressed in our
prior opinion.
So ordered.
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