Hughes v. United States

HOW DOES A COURT DETERMINE THE BINDING PRECEDENT IN A SUPREME COURT CASE WITHOUT A CLEAR MAJORITY?

Hughes asserts that the Eleventh Circuit’s denial of his sentence modification incorrectly applied the Supreme Court’s decision in Marks v. United States when it held that the single-justice concurrence in Freeman v. United States was binding precedent even though no single rationale achieves a majority. According to Hughes, the rule since Marks is that, when no single opinion captures a majority, the holding is the narrowest common rationale of a majority of Justices. Hughes contrasts this approach with the alternative used by the Eleventh Circuit, in which the court asked whether the concurring opinion would produce the same result as the plurality opinion, an approach that Hughes asserts incorrectly ignores whether there was agreement in the rationale. Hughes argues that a majority of the Court must agree upon the principle of law, not the outcome, or else the reasoning of a single Justice could have controlling effect even though eight Justices disagreed. The Eleventh Circuit’s approach to Marks, Hughes claims, creates indeterminacy because it is more difficult to predict the outcome that each opinion would yield.

Hughes then contends that, even under the Eleventh Circuit’s approach, the Justice Sotomayor’s concurrence in Freeman is not binding law. Hughes asserts that the Freeman plurality held that the sentencing decision was based only on the judge’s decision whereas the concurrence held that the sentencing decision was based on the plea agreement. According to Hughes, the Eleventh Circuit should not have found a constructive majority under Marks because there are situations in which the concurrence would allow a sentence modification, reaching a different outcome from the plurality.

The United States, on the other hand, asserts that it correctly interprets the Freeman decision in a situation where no single opinion had majority support. The United States contends that the correct approach under Marks is to find a majority by “asking which litigant would have prevailed under the rationales of at least five Justices by running the facts at hand through multiple opinions.” According to the United States, the Marks approach “reflects sound principles of judicial administration” because it ensures that Court decisions have greater precedential staying power. The United States contends that the Eleventh Circuit’s approach to Marks is superior because it allows for greater predictability and consistency in the application of decisions.

The United States argues that Hughes’s approach requiring “common reasoning” rather than common results, between opinions is inconsistent with the Marks holding. The United States claims that, in Marks, the Supreme Court constructed a majority holding in a case where five Justices reached the same conclusion using two inconsistent rationales, and that a similar approach was used in subsequent cases. The United States further argues that the “common reasoning” approach is “unsound” and inefficient because it could create situations in which a Supreme Court opinion is only binding on a single case. The United States also disagrees that the outcome-based approach would improperly give the opinion of a single Justice binding authority, even though eight other Justices disagree, because a majority of Justices would necessarily agree with the outcome of the case. The United States argues that courts are better at applying cases to facts to determine a majority based on outcomes rather than on rationales. According to the United States, when the Marks rule is correctly applied to Freeman, the one-Justice concurrence agrees with the four-Justice plurality to the extent that some cases cannot be given reduced sentences under § 3582(c)(2).

IS A DEFENDANT WHO ENTERED A PLEA AGREEMENT ELIGIBLE FOR A SENTENCE MODIFICATION UNDER 15 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2)?

Even if the Court decided that Justice Sotomayor’s concurrence in Freeman was binding, Hughes contends that he is still eligible to apply for a sentence modification under 15 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2), which provides that a court may modify a prison sentence if the defendant was “sentenced to a term of imprisonment based on a sentencing range that has subsequently been lowered.” Hughes claims that his sentence was “based on” the Sentencing Guidelines because the Guidelines informed the negotiation of his plea agreement as well as the sentencing decision of the judge.

Hughes contends that the phrase “based on” requires a connection similar to proximate cause in tort law. Even if a sentence is based on multiple causes, Hughes argues that, applying tort law, multiple causes may be equally and completely charged with a single result as long as each is a proximate cause. Hughes asserts that the basis for his sentence lies, not only in the judge’s rationale for imposing the sentence, but also in the parties’ rationale for entering the plea agreement. Hughes argues that C-type plea agreements are based on the Guidelines because the defendant and the prosecutor negotiate a range using the Guidelines. Thus, Hughes maintains, the Guidelines are a proximate cause of the plea agreement, which is in turn a proximate cause of the judge’s sentence. Hughes claims that this chain of proximate causation explains that the sentence resulting from a C-type plea agreement often resembles the sentence under the Guidelines, whether the sentence follows or deviates from the Guidelines range.

Hughes also contends that Congress intended to allow C-type plea recipients to modify sentencing arrangements under § 3582(c)(2) because doing so furthers the Sentencing Reform Act’s goal of ensuring that defendants who commit similar crimes receive similar sentences. Hughes asserts that he is, therefore, eligible for a sentence modification under § 3582(c)(2), since “every indication is that the applicable Guidelines range was closely connected” to his sentence. Both the text of the plea agreement and the judge’s statements in court indicate consideration of the Guidelines, according to Hughes.

The United States counters that defendants who enter C-type plea agreements are not eligible for sentence modification under § 3582(c)(2). The United States argues that the criminal justice system favors finality, which is why § 3582(c) does not generally allow for the modification of prison sentences, and that the modification allowed by this subsection is only a narrow exception to that general rule. Defendants with C-type plea agreements are excluded, according to the United States, because “such defendants are sentenced ‘based on’ their plea agreements, not based on any Sentencing Guidelines range.”

The United States contends that, to base one thing upon another, the second must be a fundamental or foundational part of the first, which precludes use of a tort theory of proximate cause in this scenario. The United States asserts that Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(c)(1)(C) prevents the judge from modifying the bargained-for sentence once she accepts the plea agreement, so the sentence is based only upon the binding agreement, regardless of the factors that influenced that agreement. Even if the tort theory was correct, argues the United States, the proximate cause argument fails because there is no direct causation between the Guidelines and Hughes’s sentence.

The United States also argues that, under the Sentencing Commission’s own instructions for using the Guidelines, revisions to the Guidelines should only be used to reduce a sentence where the same Guideline provisions were applied at the initial sentencing, which is not the case for a C-type plea agreement. The United States also contends that it is unfair that a defendant should receive a reduced sentence after the plea bargain is made, because the prosecutor may not have agreed to that shorter sentence and defendants knowingly bear the risk that the law may change in the future. Finally, the United States maintains that it is unfair to allow modifications to sentences based on plea agreements because plea agreements are like a contract between prosecutor and defendant, and sentence modifications would be like the defendant breaching a term of the contract.