Need for rehabilitation may not be used to impose longer sentence
Adding its voice to a split among the circuits, the D.C. Circuit recently joined the Third Circuit in holding that, as the result of an interplay between two sentencing statutes, the perceived need to rehabilitate a defendant is not a permissible basis upon which to impose a longer sentence.
Under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), courts are directed to consider a range of factors in imposing sentence. Among them is the need to provide a defendant with educational or vocational training or other correctional treatment. However, 18 U.S.C. § 3582 provides that in determining whether to impose imprisonment or, if imprisonment is imposed, the length of sentence, the sentencing court must recognize that imprisonment is not an appropriate means of promoting rehabilitation. Several courts of appeal have held that the statutes taken together do not prohibit consideration of a rehabilitation need in selecting the length of a sentence, but only prohibit its consideration in deciding whether or not to incarcerate at all. United States v. Duran, 37 F.3d 557 (9th Cir. 1994); United States v. Hawk Wing, 433 F.3d 622 (8th Cir. 2006); United States v. Giddings, 37 F.3d 1091 (5th Cir. 1994); United States v. Jackson, 70 F.3d 874 (6th Cir. 1995).
Recently, in In re Sealed Case, 573 F.3d 844 (D.C. Cir. 2009), the D.C. Circuit departed from the preceding courts to sensibly read the plain language of Section 3582 as barring any consideration of the need for rehabilitation in either imposing prison in the first instance or in deciding on the length of incarceration. Accord United States v. Manzella, 475 F.3d 152 (3d Cir. 2007); United States v. Yehuda, 238 Fed. Appx. 712 (2nd Cir. 2007).
The defendant in In re Sealed Case had distributed a small quantity of heroin, so his Criminal History category of VI yielded a range of only 24-30 months. But he also qualified as a career offender under § 4B1.1, resulting in an enhanced range of 151-188 months. The trial court selected a sentence of 132 months, indicating that it had imposed a longer period that it might have otherwise because the defendant would benefit from BOP programs and training. Based on its reading of Section 3582, the appeals court vacated the sentence and remanded.
