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Criminal Procedure

9th Circuit OKs doubling of prison term for defendant who laughed at sentencing

Laughter after he was sentenced to a year in federal prison for a probation violation cost a California defendant another year behind bars.

When U.S. District Judge Lawrence O’Neill challenged Ramon Ochoa’s demeanor he insisted he hadn’t been laughing at the sentence and apologized. But the Fresno judge, who’d just given him 12 months and a day, disagreed and doubled Ochoa’s sentence to a maximum two-year term, recounts the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a Thursday opinion (PDF).

On Thursday, a divided appellate panel in San Francisco affirmed the longer sentence, rejecting a claim by Ochoa’s appellate counsel that it violated 18 U.S.C. Section 3582, which prohibits a sentence from being modified after it is imposed unless certain conditions apply. The Legal Information Institute provides a copy of the statute.

One of the exceptions in the statute is Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 35, which allows a sentencing court to correct mistakes within a two-week period after sentencing. Rule 35 defines sentencing as “the oral announcement of sentence.” The Legal Information Institute provides a copy of the rule.

Using reasoning previously approved by the 1st, 5th and 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in earlier cases, the 9th Circuit majority said “a sentence is not final—and Rule 35(a) does not apply—when there is no formal break in the proceedings from which to logically and reasonably conclude that sentencing had finished.” Hence, it upheld the doubled sentence for Ochoa.

However, a dissenting judge—Chief District Judge Gloria Navarro of Nevada, sitting by designation—called the court’s decision draconian and said it violated the plain language of the sentencing rules.

If a defendant is disrespectful in court, he or she can be held in contempt, Navarro said.

“The decision of the majority is not supported by the relevant statutory text,” she wrote, “and perversely permits district courts to increase sentences at an arbitrary whim so long as the modified sentence is imposed before the bang of a gavel.”

Hat tip: San Francisco Chronicle