Two more of interest from the Seventh Circuit

I noted in this post late last night two interesting sentencing opinions issued by the Seventh Circuit on Tuesday. Today we get two more from that court which seem worth noting:

• US v. Skoczen, No. 03-1960 (7th Cir. Apr. 20, 2005) (available here), involves a Paladino remand; notable is the court’s initial explanation that, “because the Guidelines do retain force even though they are no longer mandatory, … errors in their application remain relevant.  Even under an advisory regime, if a district court makes a mistake in calculations under the Guidelines, its judgment about a reasonable sentence would presumably be affected by that error and thus (putting aside the implications of plain error review) remand would be required just as before.”  Also, Skoczen concludes with some detailed, and somewhat confusing, dicta about the prior conviction exception.

• US v. Miller, No. 04-1989 (7th Cir. Apr. 20, 2005) (available here), involves another sentencing remand; it includes some interesting discussion of the the mitigating role adjustment and also some dicta on post-Booker application of the obstruction of justice enhancement.  UPDATE:  Peter Henning at White Collar Crime Prof Blog comments on the Miller decision in this post.