Brief of Amici Curiae Due Process institute, Cato Institute, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Rutherford Institute, District of Columbia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, and Law Professors in Support Petition for a Writ of Certiorari.

Argument: The standard-of-review question this case presents implicates profound concerns with federal sentencing--concerns with substantial constitutional implications. Federal courts routinely sentence defendants to years in prison based on hearsay statements relayed to the court at sentencing by law enforcement officers. Those statements often come from convicted criminals who want to reduce their sentences by cooperating with the government. The cooperating criminals do not appear in court, so the district judge has no opportunity to assess their demeanor. They do not swear an oath to tell the truth. They do not face cross-examination. And their out-of-court statements need only persuade the judge by a preponderance of the evidence. Petitioner Beltran Leyva faces a life sentence based on precisely such evidence. Defendants have few safeguards against sentencing enhancements that rest on false out-of-court statements from cooperating criminals. One such protection is searching appellate review. De novo review by the court of appeals ensures that the reliability of the cooperator's statement will receive a second level of careful scrutiny. And de novo review comports with the rationale for heightened appellate scrutiny: the stakes--a person's right to due process of law before losing his liberty--are high, and, because the district court never observes the cooperator's demeanor, the appellate court is just as capable of evaluating his credibility.

Brief of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers as Amicus Curiae in Support of Petitioner (on Petition for Writ of Certiorari).

Argument: In 2007, the Supreme Court in Rita v. United States declined to consider the hypothetical issue of whether judicial factfinding may justify an otherwise unreasonable sentence. This case presents the best possible concrete version of Rita's hypothetical. The Court should grant review to determine whether it was permissible for the district court to impose a 92-year sentence for a non-violent fraud with a Guidelines range of under five years, based solely on a judicial finding that petitioner committed a "heinous" murder. And for the reasons further detailed in the petition, the Court should also conclude that this sentence violated petitioner's right to a jury trial under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. The Court should grant the petition for a writ of certiorari in this case.