Another alternative sentence affirmance from the 4th Circuit

I discussed here two recent (unpublished) Fourth Circuit dispositions in cases in which the district court, in the wake of Blakely and before Booker, had announced an alternative sentence just in case the federal guidelines were deemed unconstitutional.  On Friday, the Fourth Circuit resolved another such case, and in US v. Washington, No. 04-4721 (4th Cir. Apr. 1, 2005) (available here), the court affirmed a sentence imposed under the guidelines because the “district court also specified an identical alternative sentence of 102 months.”   In Washington, the Fourth Circuit, as it did the day before in Anderson, No. 04-4621 (available here), said that the announced identical alternative sentence showed that “any error resulting from the sentence imposed by the district court was harmless.”

As I think about the dispositions in Anderson and Washington, I must admit to being a bit troubled by the exact harmony of the guideline sentence and the advisory sentence announced by the district court.  Also, I think that, in these cases, the Booker opinion may impose upon the Fourth Circuit an obligation to assess independently whether these alternative sentences are “reasonable.”