Malik Javier McKenzie v. United States

At sentencing, the district court applied two disputed Sentencing Guidelines enhancements that increased petitioner’s offense level by eight levels. On appeal, the Eleventh Circuit declined to decide whether either enhancement was correctly applied. Instead, invoking its decision in United States v. Keene, 470 F.3d 1347 (11th Cir. 2006), the court held that any Guidelines error was harmless because the district court stated that it would impose the same sentence “regardless of what the guidelines say,” and the resulting sentence would be substantively reasonable even under the lower, correctly calculated range. This Court has repeatedly held that a correct Guidelines calculation is the mandatory “starting point” and “initial benchmark” of every federal sentencing, Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 49 (2007), that the Guidelines exert an “anchor[ing]” effect on the sentence ultimately imposed, Peugh v. United States, 569 U.S. 530, 541 (2013), and that an incorrect range will, in the ordinary case, suffice to show a reasonable probability of a different sentence, Molina-Martinez v. United States, 578 U.S. 189, 200 (2016). The question presented is: Whether a court of appeals may treat a disputed Guidelines-calculation error as harmless based solely on a district court’s generalized statement that it would impose the same sentence regardless of the Guidelines, without deciding whether the disputed enhancements were legally valid and without requiring the district court to have identified, and explained the sentence against, the correct Guidelines range.