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Court Sets Standard for Preservation of Procedural Sentencing Error

By Jonathan Byrne

US v. Lynn: This is actually three apparently unrelated sentencing appeals (one involves codefendants, however) collected in one place to resolve one issue - the proper standard of review when a party argues on appeal that the district court committed procedural error in selecting the sentence it imposed. The Fourth Circuit concluded that the correct standard is abuse of discretion (aka "reasonableness"), followed by an examination of harmless error if the district court did abuse its discretion. That is if the party arguing on appeal properly preserved the issue in the first place, else they are stuck with plain error review. Reviewing FRCrPr 52, the court concluded that the appealing party does not have to make a post-imposition objection in order to preserve the issue on appeal...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Circuit Blog on February 18, 2010 (boomark / email).