This appeal raises an issue, new to this court, that has fomented a circuit split: Is a defendant who was sentenced pursuant to a binding C-type plea agreement, Fed. R.Crim.P. 11(c)(1)(C), for conspiring to distribute crack cocaine entitled to a sentence reduction by reason of retroactive amendments to the sentencing guidelines designed to lower sentences for crack cocaine offenses? We conclude that, in the absence of explicit countervailing language in the plea agreement, 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2) does not apply and, therefore, such a defendant is ineligible for the sentence reduction.
I. BACKGROUND
On March 6, 2000, defendant-appellant Robin Eddie Rivera-Martinez pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiring to possess with intent to distribute, inter alia, more than five kilograms of cocaine base (crack cocaine). See 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 846. The defendant entered his plea after having made an agreement with the government pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(c)(1)(C).
The defendant’s plea agreement spells out the parties’ agreement that the defendant will receive a 240-month sentence. Although the pact contains no forecast of a guideline sentencing range (GSR), paragraph seven includеs a stipulation to a total offense level (thirty-seven) and a covenant against further adjustments to that level.
At the change-of-plea hearing, the district court provisionally accepted the proffered plea and ordered the preparation of a presentencе investigation report (PSI Report). When delivered, the PSI Report suggested a GSR, the calculation of which was premised upon the stipulated total offense level and a criminal history category of II.
The district court convened the disposition hearing on September 12, 2000. After rehearsing the PSI Report’s guideline calculations (which yielded a GSR of 235-293 months), the court stated that it would “accept the [C-type] plea agreement stipulated by the parties and ... sentence the Defendant accordingly.” It then imposed the agreed-upon sentence: 240 months in prison.
We fast-forward to 2007, when the United States Sentencing Commission announced an across-the-board reduction of base offense levels for crack cocaine offenses. See USSG App. C, Amend. 706 (Supp.2007) (modifying USSG § 2D1.1); see also USSG App. C, Amend. 711 (Supp.2007). These amendments, originally effective November 1, 2007, were later made retroactive. See USSG App. C, Amend. 713 (Supp.2008). Their purpose was to ameliorate the sentencing disparity between offenses involving powdered cocaine and offenses involving crack cocaine. See United States v. Caraballo,
Seizing upon these developments, the defendant moved for a sentence reduction.
II. ANALYSIS
We normally review a district court’s denial of a motion for sentence reduction for abuse of discretion. See, e.g., United States v. Rodríguez-Peña,
For the most part, once a pronounced sentence in a criminal case becomes final and unappealable, the sentencing court may not revise it. 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c). Like virtually every general rule, however, this rule is subject to exceptions. One such exception provides:
[I]n the case of a defendant who has been sentenced to a term of imprisonment based on a sentencing range that has subsequently been lowered by the Sentencing Commission ... the court may reduce the term of imprisonment, after considering the factors set forth in [18 U.S.C. § ] 3553(a) to the extent that they are аpplicable, if such a reduction is consistent with applicable policy statements issued by the Sentencing Commission.
Id. § 3582(c)(2). This subsection authorizes a district court to reduce a sentence if — and only if — the Sentencing Commission subsequently amends a guideline on which the sentence was based. Caraballo,
In this instance, thе defendant pleaded guilty by means of a C-type plea agreement. The applicable rule permits the parties to agree that, upon the entry of a plea of guilty or nolo contendere, the government will “agree that a specific sentence or sentencing range is thе appropriate disposition of the case, or that a particular provision of the Sentencing Guidelines, or policy statement, or sentencing factor does or does not apply.” Fed.R.Crim.P. 11(c)(1)(C). Where the parties employ this device (as they did in this case), the resultant “recommendation or request binds the court once the court accepts the plea agreement.” Id. This sets up a unique dynamic: although garden-variety plea agreements generally are treated as binding on the defendant and the government, see United States v. Teeter,
The salient question in this case reduces to whether a district court has authority, under section 3582(c)(2), to modify a sentence imposed pursuant to a C-type plea agreement when that agreement was negotiated against the backdrop of guidelines that were subsequently amended. Although this question is one of novel impression in this circuit, other courts of appeals have grappled with it. The majority of them have held, albeit with varying rationales, that the district court lacks such authority under section 3582(c)(2). See, e.g., United States v. Green,
We begin our analysis with the elementary proposition that a court, within wide limits, should interpret a plea agreement according to principles of contract law. United States v. Ortiz-Santiago,
The defendant’s claim that the guideline amendments bring him within the compass of section 3582(c)(2) and entitle him to a sentence reduction is undermined by the way in which C-type plea agreements operate. Once the district court accepts a C-type plea agreement, the court is obliged to sentence the defendant in strict conformity with the terms of the agreement. The sentence is, therefore, “based on” the plea agreement. See Green,
This does not mean that there is no connection between C-type plea agreements and the sentencing guidelines. It is common practice that, in determining whether to accept or reject the sentence proposed in a C-type plea agreement, a district court will use the guidelines as a point of comparison. But taking such a precautionary step does not transmogrify an agreement-based sentence into one based on the guidelines.
The fact that the guidelines may have played a role in the parties’ negotiation of a particular sentence does not alter this analysis. When a C-type plea is at issue, it is the terms of the agreement, not the process of arriving at those terms or the extеrnal considerations bearing upon them, that dictate the sentence to be imposed. See United States v. Ray,
In the case at hand, the terms of the plea agreement do not expressly provide (or even hint) that the stipulated 240-month sentence depends on the guidelines. The fact that the agreement includes a stipulation as to the defendant’s total offense level does not suffice. Merely mentioning one integer in a possible guidelines calculation is not enough to evince a mutual intention that the agreed-upon sentence will be adjusted should the relevant guidelines change.
We add a coda. Even apart from the plain meaning of “based on” in section 3582(c)(2), Rule 11(c)(1)(C) itself precludes a district court from unilaterally altering a sentence lawfully imposed under a C-type plea agreement. Once the court accepts such a plea agreement, it is bound by the terms thereof. See United States v. Mukai,
This result is consistent with the established view that plea agreements are for the most part governed by principles of contract law. In this case, no principle of contract law would have justified the lower court, once it accepted the agreement, in revising the specified sentence.
In an effort to contradict this conclusion, the defendant asserts that this is a case that involves a mutual mistake of fact; that is, a mutual mistake about a fundamental assumption — the immutability of the guidelines that formed the backdrop against which the parties negotiated the
Whether a party to a plea agreement may be entitled to relief on the ground of mutual mistake is in dispute. Compare, e.g., United States v. Olesen,
We need not resolve this question definitively because there is no evidence hеre of a mutual mistake. In other words, there is nothing that suffices to show an assumption, held by both the defendant and the prosecution, that the relevant guidelines would not be amended in the future. The raw materials needed to apply the doctrine of mutual mistake are, therefore, lacking. See Sanchez,
III. CONCLUSION
We need gо no further. The plea agreement at issue here reflects the parties’ agreement to a specific sentence, and the district court, once it accepted that C-type agreement, was duty bound to adhere to that sentence. It follows inexorably that the imposed sentenсe is based on the plea agreement itself, not on “a sentencing range that has subsequently been lowered.” 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2). The upshot is that, notwithstanding the guideline amendments lowering the offense levels for crack cocaine offenses, section 3582(c)(2) does not authorize a reduction of the defendant’s sentence.
Affirmed.
Notes
. More precisely, the plea agreement was made pursuant to former Rule 11(e)(1)(C), which was revised and renumbered in 2002. It is now Rule 11(c)(1)(C). The revisions are wholly stylistic. See Fed.R.Crím.P. 11 advisory committee's note (2002 amendments); see also United States v. Main, 579 F.3d 200, 203 n. 2 (2d Cir.2009); United States v. Scurlark,
. A panel of the Fourth Circuit held similarly, but the court granted rehearing en banc, simultaneously vacating the panel opinion. See United Slates v. Dews,
. To some extent, this conclusion was adumbrated by our earlier decision in Caraballo. Thеre, we wrote that "if an amended guideline does not have the effect of lowering the sentencing range actually used at sentencing, the defendant’s sentence was not based on that range within the intendment of [section 3582(c)(2)].”
. Indeed, the instant plea agreement does not even contain the ingredients from which a GSR could be calculated. It is not only silent as to the defendant’s criminal history category but also states explicitly that the parties have not reached a consensus on that subject. Thus, it is impossible, within the four corners of the plea agreement, even to calculate the GSR.