After issuing a published opinion on December 30 and then mysteriously withdrawing it on January 3, the Third Circuit today issued a revised opinion in US v. Mateo-Medina, again remanding for resentencing on a finding that the district court committed plain error by relying in part on arrests that did not result in convictions.
It’s not immediately obvious to me exactly what changes the panel made to the previously-issued opinion, which no longer is on the court’s website for side-by-side comparison.
UPDATE: see D’s helpful comment with a link to the old opinion and identifying changes.
The original is available on Justia at: http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca3/15-2862/15-2862-2016-12-30.html
I looked at them side-by-side:
Page 4 — Deleted the sentence “The Government also moved for a downward departure pursuant to USSG s. 5K1.1 and 18 USC 3553(e).”
Page 9, added FN26: “Although 18 U.S.C. § 3661 provides that “[n]o limitation shall be placed on the information concerning the background, character, and conduct of a person convicted for an offense which a court in the United States may receive and consider for the purpose of imposing an appropriate sentence,” such information must be reliable. See Berry, 553 F.3d at 279-80 (explaining that facts considered at sentencing must be proved by preponderance of the evidence to satisfy requirements of Due Process Clause). As explained more fully herein, the bare arrest record relied on by the District Court in this case does not meet this requirement of reliability.
Those are the only changes I could see.