Are more than 99.9% of guideline sentences reasonable?
Many facets of this list of Booker reasonableness review outcomes are discouraging. But I find most troubling the fact that, a full 21 months since Booker was handed down, circuit courts have reversed only one within-guideline sentence as substantively unreasonable. Consider this fact against the reality that more than 75,000 within-guideline sentence have been imposed, and thousands appealed, since Booker. That only a single within-guideline sentence has been found unreasonable on appeal suggests that the guidelines are thought reasonable by circuit courts in more than 99.9% of all cases.
If the circuit courts generally viewed everything district courts did after Booker reasonable, this within-guideline statistic might not be so jarring. But, as this list shows, the circuits have declared unreasonable a below-guideline sentence in more than 50 cases appealed by the government (while affirming only a handful of below-guideline sentences). So, while the circuits have found 99.9% of within-guideline sentences to be reasonable, they have concluded that the district judge has issued a reasonable sentence in less than 20% of the cases in which the government appeals. Stunning (and sad).