What wrong with equitable Booker retroactivity in the Ninth Circuit?

Last year, after a Ninth Circuit panel in US v. Crawford, No. 03-30263 (9th Cir. Aug. 24, 2005) (available here), recalled its mandate to allow resentencing in a case that became final before Booker, I suggested that the court was essentially adopting “a policy of equitable Booker retroactivity.”  And now, with the fascinating decision in Carrington v. US, No. 03-30263 (9th Cir. Dec. 13, 2006) (available here), that policy takes on new and broader life in the Ninth Circuit.

Orin Kerr seems troubled by Carrington and apparently thinks the Supreme Court will be, too.  But why?  Carrington does not declare Booker retroactive (even though perhaps Booker should be), and it is not clearly unlawful. 

What is unlawful are the constitutionally problematic sentences still being served by the defendants involved in Carrington. The dissenter in Carrington and Orin and others may not be troubled by defendants still serving unconstitutional prison sentences, but what’s so wrong with the Ninth Circuit seeking to provide a remedy that is permissible under the law?

Of course, finality is an important value, but this value is always balanced against other values.  If the Ninth Circuit panel in Carrington decides to strike the finality-fairness balance this way after Booker, why should the Supreme Court really care much?   

This issue would be a lot different if the Ninth Circuit were overturning long-ago state convictions based on its own questionable view of constitutional rules.  But, in Carrington, the Ninth Circuit is merely allowing reconsideration of on-going federal sentences based on the Supreme Court’s constitutional rules.  Perhaps the Ninth Circuit en banc will seek to balance federal sentencing fairness and finality differently than the Carrington panel majority; but I do not see why the Supreme Court should be eagerly interested in keeping a federal district court from having a chance to reconsider an unconstitutional (and still on-going) federal sentence.

UPDATE: I fill out my perspective on Carrington in this post and in the comments, but I want to further address one commentor’s concern that the Ninth Circuit has created a doctrine that unfairly turns on whether a “defendant [was] lucky enough to draw a vocal opponent of the Guidelines.”  I share this worry, though it was not often expressed as a critique when this was the standard being used by most circuits when addressing Booker plain error.  In the 1st, 5th, 8th, 10th and 11th Circuits, defendants still on direct appeal would not get a chance to be resentenced right after Booker unless the district judge had been “a vocal opponent of the Guidelines.”  (And, of course, the Supreme Court denied cert on all those defendants objecting to this rule.)

Why are folks worried about unequal justice when it might help some defendants, but not when it hurts them?  To paraphrase a famous quote from Justice Brennan, I wonder why we fear too much justice.