Doesn’t failure to even mention defense arguments or 3553(a) amount to error after Rita?

A helpful reader pointed out a disturbing ruling yesterday from the Tenth Circuit in US v. Cereceres-Zavala, No. 05-2191 (10th Cir. Aug. 28, 2007) (available here).  Though citing Rita, the Tenth Circuit’s ruling seems to run counter to Rita‘s emphasis on the importance of sentencing decisions being “reasoned decisions.” 

In Cereceres-Zavala, the defendant filed “two motions, each styled as a ‘Motion for Downward Departure.'” But, when imposing a within-guideline sentence, the “district court court never mentioned or ruled expressly on either of Cereceres’s motions for downward departure,” nor did it even mention that the guidelines were advisory or that it had considered 3553(a).  Finding no error, the Tenth Circuit has this to say:

Although the sentencing court provided no direct response at all to Cereceres’s requests for departure, its citation of the PSR’s calculation method and recitation of the suggested imprisonment range amply fulfilled § 3553(c)’s requirement of a “general statement noting the appropriate guideline range and how it was calculated.” Ruiz-Terrazas, 477 F.3d at 1202. “[C]ontext and the record make clear” the district court’s reasoning for rejecting Cereceres’s arguments, and the court “must have believed there was not much more to say.”  Rita, 127 S. Ct. at 2469.

The Rita majority stressed, however, that a sentencing judge “should set forth enough to satisfy the appellate court that he has considered the parties’ arguments and has a reasoned basis for exercising his own legal decision-making authority.”  Though the Cereceres-Zavala panel seems pretty easily satisfied, I have a hard time with its attitude after Rita.  Rita stresses that, even when giving a guideline sentence, a judge should “explain why he has rejected those arguments” put forward by defendants for a different sentence.  Even in context, silence does not seem to me to be an adequate explanation.