UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. HENRY MARTIN STEIGER, a.k.a. Henry Matthew Steiger, a.k.a. H M Steiger, a.k.a. Robert Woods
No. 22-10742
United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit
April 29, 2024
D.C. Docket No. 3:17-cr-00043-RV-2. [PUBLISH]
Before WILLIAM PRYOR, Chief Judge, and WILSON, JORDAN, ROSENBAUM, JILL PRYOR, NEWSOM, BRANCH, GRANT, LUCK, LAGOA, BRASHER, and ABUDU, Circuit Judges.
BRASHER, Circuit Judge:
While on federal probation, Henry Steiger was convicted in state court of murdering the mother of his infant child on the baby‘s first birthday. The government moved to revoke Steiger‘s probation for committing this new offense, and the district court agreed. After revoking Steiger‘s probation, the district court imposed a modified sentence well above Steiger‘s advisory guidelines range—the statutory maximum of twenty years’ imprisonment to run concurrently with the state court‘s murder sentence. The district court did not explain why it chose that sentence, and Steiger did not object to the lack of explanation.
Steiger argues that we should vacate his sentence and remand for the district court to explain why it chose twenty years. The law requires a district court to state in open court its reasons for choosing a particular sentence, see
We took this appeal en banc to answer two questions. First, we asked whether we should overrule our precedents that impose the “per se rule of reversal” and, instead, review unpreserved
In addition to this
Henry Steiger pleaded guilty to three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Due to some legal technicalities not relevant here, Steiger‘s recommended custodial sentence under the United States Sentencing Guidelines was only zero to six months’ imprisonment. The distriсt court did not impose any prison time, but it did sentence Steiger to three years’ probation. A sentence of probation necessarily implies trust that the defendant will not reoffend while serving the sentence. See
The hearing was dеdicated almost exclusively to a discussion of Steiger‘s heinous conduct underlying his second-degree murder conviction. The district court heard evidence that Steiger strangled to death the mother of his infant daughter—on the baby‘s first birthday and while the baby was in her mother‘s arms. Steiger then hid the woman‘s body in a 55-gallon barrel and stowed the barrel in a trailer. When interviewed by law enforcement about the woman‘s disappearance, Steiger disclaimed knowledge of her whereabouts. Eventually, police discovered the woman‘s body. Steiger admits to hiding the body and lying about it to lаw enforcement, but he maintains that he did not commit murder. As Steiger tells it, he found the woman dead and thought she committed suicide. He says he thought the woman‘s death would cause him to lose custody of his daughter, so he frantically tried to “cover [his] tracks,” which made him look “like a guilty person.”
The district court rejected Steiger‘s claim of factual innocence. The district court instead found by a preponderance of the evidence what the Florida state jury had already found beyond a reasonable doubt—Steiger murdered the mother of his infant daughter. Cf. United States v. Watts, 519 U.S. 148, 156 (1997). Accordingly, thе district court ruled that Steiger “violated the terms and conditions of [his] probation” by committing the state law offense of second-degree murder and revoked Steiger‘s probation.
Having found that Steiger committed second-degree murder in violation of the terms of his probation, the district court imposed a new sentence for Steiger‘s federal conspiracy and wire fraud convictions. See
The district court never explicitly said that it was imposing a twenty-year sentence because Steiger committed a violent
Steiger appealed, arguing that his sentence is an excessively harsh upward variance and that the district court did not take the steps necessary to calculate an adequate sentence. The three-judge panel assigned to the case could not reach those issues, however. Under our precedent, any
Concurring with the Steiger panel‘s application of our precedents, Chief Judge Pryor lamented the incoherence and inconsistency of our “per se rule of reversal” for
We voted to take the case en banc and asked the parties to brief two questions. First, we asked whether we should overrule in part our cases creating the per se rule of reversal for
II.
Criminal defendants in federal court have the right to know the reason for their sentence so they can understand the process and challenge their sentence on appeal. To ensure that a defendant has that information, the law requires that a district court “state in open court the reasons for its imposition of the particular sentence.”
The district court‘s obligation under
Although it isn‘t onerous to comply with
A.
We begin by holding that an unobjected-to
Two general rules frame the issue here. The first is that we don‘t reverse based on errors (even preserved ones) that are harmless—that is, if they didn‘t affect the outcome of the proceeding. See
We recognized a
No other circuit has followed Williams. The Second and Seventh Circuits have held that a contemporaneous objection is necessary to preserve a
We are likewise convinced that Williams was wrong. In departing from the plain error standard, the Williams panel felt itself bound by United States v. Parrado, 911 F.2d 1567 (11th Cir. 1990), and United States v. Veteto, 920 F.2d 823 (11th Cir. 1991). But those precedents do not require that result.
For starters, neither precedent addressed the standard of review for unobjected-to
If anything, the result in Parrado suggests that we implicitly rejected an automatic reversal rule—because we affirmed. Instead of reversing based on the district court‘s lack of explanation alone, the panel in Parrado searched the record for some evidence that the district court‘s error had affected the defendant‘s ability to understand his sentence. In particular, the panel asked whеther the district court‘s reasoning was evident, even though it had failed to explain itself. Then, because the panel held that the record was sufficiently clear, it reasoned that reversal was unwarranted. See id. at 1573.
Obviously, neither precedent mandates reversal for all
Other justifications for the Williams rule fare no better. The Parks panel, engaging in its duty to reconcile conflicting cases, posited that the Williams rule is justifiable because a
That justification falls flat for at least two reasons. First, it prizes record development at the expense of the timely objection rule‘s other aims that are fully applicable in the
Finally, there is no reason to conclude that a
A district court‘s failure to explain the reason for a sentence is not structural. The federal sentencing framework requires that district courts resolve factual disputes, calculate the guidelines range, consider the
In short, there‘s simply no basis to depart from the general rule of plain error review for unobjected-to errors. We therefore hold that an unobjected-to
B.
We must now decide whether the district court committed plain error by failing to “state in open court ... the specific reason for the imposition of a sentence” outside the guidelines range or file a written statement of reasons.
The government does not dispute that Steiger satisfies the first and second elements.
For the third element of plain error, Steiger must establish that the district court‘s
Putting everything together, the third and fourth elements of plain error rise and fall, in this context, based on one thing: the clarity of the record. An ambiguous record could prevent a defendant from understanding his punishment, impede appellate review, and undermine public confidence by making a sentence appear secretive аnd arbitrary. But if the basis of the sentence is clear on the face of the record, then the defendant is not left out of the loop, appellate courts can effectively review the legality of the sentence, district judges can use the sentence as a comparator, and the public won‘t be left to guess why the defendant received the sentence he did. Accordingly, we hold that a
The government disagrees thаt a defendant in Steiger‘s position can establish plain error if the district court‘s
First, the government focuses on the wrong outcome. We often describe an appellant‘s burden under plain error review as establishing that the “outcome” of the judicial proceeding would have changed. See Daniels, 91 F.4th at 1095. But we definе the “outcome” that must have been affected by considering the nature of the rule violated by the district court and the role that rule plays in the judicial process. For example, when a defendant says his guilty plea was unknowing or involuntary in violation of
Second,
For his part, Steiger argues that this framework for evaluating plain error reads the word “specific” out of
Applying that view of plain error review here, we cannot say the district court plainly erred. A reasonable person familiar with the sentencing record would understand that Steiger received an above-guidelines sentence because, while he was out on probation, he brutally murdered the mother of his infant daughter, hid her body, and then lied to law enforcement about it. Steiger‘s second-degree murder
C.
To be clear, this opinion does not address whether the district court‘s reasons for varying upward were appropriate or otherwise resolve whether Steiger‘s sentence is lawful. He raised multiple procedural and substantive arguments on appeal. The panel initially assigned to this case was foreclosed from reaching those arguments because оf our per se rule of reversal. Today‘s holding—that the district court‘s failure to explicitly state its reasons for an upward variance was not plain error because those reasons are obvious on the face of the record—simply removes the barrier to review.
III.
We REMAND to the panel for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
JORDAN, Circuit Judge, joined by ROSENBAUM and JILL PRYOR, Circuit Judges, Concurring:
I join Judge Brasher‘s well-written opinion in full but write briefly to offer some cautionary thoughts.
Justice Holmes once remarked that “hard cases” can “make bad law.” Northern Sec. Co. v. United States, 193 U.S. 197, 400 (1904) (Holmes, J., dissenting). But easy cases sometimes bring difficulties of their own. Our affirmance in this case, under plain error review, is made relatively simple by the fact that Mr. Steiger murdered the mother of his child while on probation. But most cases will not be so easy. In run of the mill cases—where many different facts and arguments may be in play at sentencing—analyzing the substantial rights prong of the plain error analysis may not be as straightforward. I doubt very much that many cases in the future will be this cut and dry.
While on federal probation, Mr. Steiger was convicted in state court of the second-degree murder of the mother of his child. The probation office petitioned the district court to revoke his probation on this one ground, and the conviction was understandably the focus of the revocation hearing. At the hearing, Mr. Steiger argued that he should be sentenced to time-served because he was already facing life imprisonment on the second-degree murder conviction and because—despite the jury verdict—he had not committed the murder. All parties, including Mr. Steiger, understood that the advisory guidelines range for the probation violation was 12 to 18 months. And Mr. Steiger did not object to the government‘s representation that, according to probation, the district court was statutorily authorized to sentence him to 20 years for each of his four original federal offenses and to run the sentences consecutively, for a maximum sentence of 80 years.
The district court sentenced Mr. Steiger to four terms of 20 years, but ran those terms concurrently with each other and with his state court life imprisonment sentence.
But sentencing is often a more complicated affair, with opposing recommendations from the parties, competing aggravating and mitigating facts, possible enhancements, departures, and variances, and disputed guideline provisions. If a district court does not adequately explain its reasons for a sentence, those reasons may not be apparent from the record. See, e.g., United States v. Wallace, 597 F.3d 794, 805 (6th Cir. 2010) (2-1 decision) (finding plain error where the majority (a) “simply [could] not determine whether the district [court] considered the disparity between [the co-defendants‘] sentences,” and (b) disagreed with the dissent‘s contention that “it [wa]s clear” that the district court considered the argument, which it deemed “conceptually straightforward“).
We do not provide a benchmark today on when a “district court‘s reasoning is unclear on the face of the record.” Maj. Op. at 16. A defendant‘s ability to satisfy his or her burden under plain error review is therefore going to be fact-specific and subject to a case-by-case adjudication. This is the right call, as a really easy case like this one can make it difficult to provide broad guidance for the future.