Jovan Rivera Rodriguez v. United States

In United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220, 260-262 (2005), this Court invalidated 18 U.S.C. § 3553(b)(1), a provision that made the Sentencing Guidelines mandatory. In the aftermath of Booker, sentencing courts had to follow the “broad command” of the parsimony clause of 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), which requires the imposition of a sentence that is “sufficient, but not greater than necessary” to fulfill the purposes of justice, deterrence, protection, and rehabilitation. See Dean v. United States, 581 U.S. 62, 66 (2017). Following that clause is a list of sentencing factors that courts must consider in sentencing a defendant. See 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). Yet, even after Booker, the vestiges of the mandatory guideline regime continue to infect federal sentencing through the restrictive application of 18 U.S.C. § 3553(e). Indeed, most federal circuit courts, like the Eleventh Circuit below, interpret § 3553(e) to prohibit a district court from considering the parsimony clause or the 18 U.S.C. § 3553 factors in imposing a sentence below the minimum mandatory in cases involving a defendant’s cooperation. Under this conception, a court’s task in crafting a sentence below a minimum mandatory begins and ends with a judicial assessment of the defendant’s cooperation – nothing more and nothing less. The question presented is whether 18 U.S.C. § 3553(e) bars a district court from considering § 3553(a)’s parsimony clause and sentencing factors in imposing a sentence below a minimum mandatory?