Holguin-Hernandez: No Need to Re-Raise Sentence-Length Objections

In Holguin-Hernandez v. United States, the Supreme Court held that asking for a particular sentence before sentencing is enough to preserve a sentence-length error for appeal. Proposing the shorter sentence puts the parties and district court on notice of the defendant’s argument. Defendants thus do not need to object to that later-imposed, longer sentence to avoid plain error review. Requiring a subsequent objection serves no purpose and results in an unnecessarily high bar for appellate review of sentencing.

The split on preserving sentencing errors

As a general rule, litigants must raise an issue in the district court to preserve that issue for appeal. In criminal cases, this general preservation requirement comes from Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 51(b). The rule provides that “[a] party may preserve a claim of error by informing the court—when the court ruling or order is made or sought—of the action the party wishes the court to take, or the party’s objection to the court’s action and the grounds for that objection.” Absent preservation, review is only for plain error—a difficult form of appellate review.

Holguin-Hernandez concerned preserving sentencing errors. Before sentencing, a defendant will normally argue for a sentence that the defense thinks is appropriate. The district court then sentences the defendant to what it thinks is appropriate.

In most circuits, proposing a sentence shorter than that which the district court judge imposed is enough to preserve sentence-length issues for appeal. But not in the Fifth Circuit. That court has held that defendants must object again, after the district court has imposed the longer sentence, to preserve the issue.

The Fifth Circuit’s decision in Holguin-Hernandez

The defendant in Holguin-Hernandez did not make this post-sentencing objection.

The defendant was on supervised release when he was convicted of drug trafficking. The district court sentenced him to five years’ imprisonment on the trafficking charge, and the government sought an additional term of imprisonment for the supervised-release violation. The defendant countered with a request for no additional jail time, arguing that the five years he had already received were sufficient. But the district court sided with the government and added 12 months to the defendant’s sentence.

The defendant did not formally object to this additional term of imprisonment. Instead, he appealed. But the Fifth Circuit held that he failed to preserve the issue for appeal because he had “failed to raise his challenges in the district court.” The court accordingly reviewed only for plain error. And it found no clear or obvious error that would warrant vacating the sentence.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Holguin-Hernandez

The Supreme Court reversed in a short opinion. The Court held that pre-sentence arguments for a shorter sentence were sufficient to preserve sentence-length errors. Defendants who tell the district court what sentence they think is appropriate fully apprise the court of the action they want the court to take:

A defendant who, by advocating for a particular sentence, communicates to the trial judge his view that a longer sentence is “greater than necessary” has thereby informed the court of the legal error at issue in an appellate challenge to the substantive reasonableness of the sentence.

Nothing more is required.

The Court declined to address other issues that the parties raised in their briefing, as the Fifth Circuit had not addressed them. The Court instead vacated the Fifth Circuit’s decision and remanded for further proceedings.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Alito wrote to “emphasize what [the Court was] not deciding”: what is required to preserve a claimed procedural error at sentencing, what is required to preserve a particular argument about sentence length, and whether the defendant in Holguin-Hernandez preserved any particular arguments.

The right decision

Holguin-Hernandez got it right. Preservation requirements allow trial courts to address—and possibly correct—errors in the first instance. And they give opposing parties a chance to respond to arguments before the record closes. These requirements accordingly prevent appellants from sandbagging issues that could have been addressed and corrected before an appeal.

When defendants argue for a sentence shorter, the court and the parties have full notice of the defendants’ position. Any additional preservation requirements—like those imposed by the Fifth Circuit—are needless. There was no benefit to the Fifth Circuit’s old rule, which precluded full appellate review for no good reason. Good riddance.

Other coverage of Holguin-Hernandez

For more on yesterday’s decision, see Douglas Berman’s post at the Sentencing Law and Policy Blog and Rory Little’s opinion analysis at SCOTUSBlog.

Holguin-Hernandez v. United States, 2020 WL 908880 (Feb. 26, 2020), available at the Supreme Court and Westlaw.