United States of America v. David Williams

*The Honorable Robert Holmes Bell, United States District Judge for the Western District
of Michigan, sitting by designation.
NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION
File Name: 05a0165n.06
Filed: March 3, 2005
No. 03-6493
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
DAVID WILLIAMS,
Defendant-Appellant.
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ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED
STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE
WESTERN DISTRICT OF TENNESSEE
Before: RYAN and COOK, Circuit Judges; BELL, District Judge.*
COOK, Circuit Judge. David Williams appeals the district court’s denial of a downward
sentencing departure for an “extraordinary physical impairment” under United States Sentencing
Guidelines § 5H1.4. In light of the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Booker, 125 S. Ct.
738 (2005), we vacate Williams’s sentence and remand for resentencing.
I
Williams pleaded guilty to possessing false federal identification documents. At sentencing,
Williams objected to the Presentence Investigation Report, arguing he should receive a § 5H1.4

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1Section 5H1.4 provides “[A]n extraordinary physical impairment may be a reason to depart
downward; e.g., in the case of a seriously infirm defendant, home detention may be as efficient as,
and less costly than, imprisonment.”
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“downward departure”—the option of home detention —because he suffered from numerous health
problems, thus making home detention less costly and more efficient than incarceration in a Bureau
of Prisons medical center.1
The district court denied Williams’s departure request, comparing Williams to two other
defendants who received departures under § 5H1.4 and deciding that though Williams suffered from
serious ailments, his health problems were less severe than those of the other two and thus did not
constitute an extraordinary physical impairment under § 5H1.4. The court also considered whether
Williams’s ailments were so severe as to prevent him from engaging in criminal conduct and
determined they were not; this too, it found, demonstrated that his physical condition did not rise
to the level required for a § 5H1.4 departure.
The district court sentenced Williams before the Supreme Court rendered its decisions in
Blakely v. Washington, 124 S. Ct. 2531 (2004) and United States v. Booker, 125 S. Ct. 738 (2005).
When the Supreme Court decided Blakely, Williams moved this court to vacate his sentence and
remand for resentencing, arguing that Blakely implicitly rendered the Guidelines advisory. We
denied the motion in light of our decision in United States v. Koch, 383 F.3d 436 (6th Cir. 2004) (en
banc). Then, when the Supreme Court issued its decision in Booker, Williams again moved this
court to vacate his sentence and remand for resentencing.

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II
On appeal, Williams primarily contends that the district court incorrectly applied § 5H1.4
because it created a new “requirement” that, to warrant a § 5H1.4 departure, a defendant’s physical
condition must prevent him from engaging in criminal behavior. We need not address this
argument, however, because we believe the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Booker requires us
to vacate Williams’s sentence.
In a motion to this court and at oral argument, Williams requested remand for resentencing
in light of Booker. Acknowledging the absence of a Sixth Amendment violation in his sentencing,
Williams seeks sentencing relief premised only on the ground that the altered regime post-Booker
warrants reconsideration by the sentencing judge.
This court in United States v. Barnett recently held, under circumstances materially
indistinguishable from those here (including plain-error review), that a defendant meets the first,
second, and fourth prongs of the plain-error test when sentenced under mandatory Guidelines. See
United States v. Barnett, ___ F.3d ___, 2005 WL 357015, at *8, 12 (6th Cir. 2005). As regards the
third prong, Barnett requires panels of this circuit to presume prejudice unless record evidence exists
to rebut the presumption. Barnett, 2005 WL 357015, at *12.
A review of the sentencing-hearing transcript shows the district court here struggled with the
decision to commit Williams to a prison setting instead of home confinement. The court called this
a “fairly close case” and recognized that Williams suffers from “a very significant physical

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impairment.” The court, however, concluded that the Guidelines contemplated “something more”
for § 5H1.4 relief and thus denied the departure. The record lacks “clear and specific evidence”
demonstrating that the district court would not have granted the departure under advisory
Guidelines.
III
Williams’s case meets the Barnett standard for exercising our discretion to notice the error.
We vacate his sentence and remand to the district court for resentencing under the new rubric
established by Booker.

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