United States District Court, D. Colorado
ORDER DENYING MOTION TO RECONSIDER SENTENCE
William J. Martínez United States District Judge
This
matter is before the Court on the Defendant Heather
Carr's letter received by the Court on April 1, 2019,
which the Court construed as a Motion to Reconsider Sentence
(the “Motion”). (ECF Nos. 461 & 462.) In
response, the Government argued that the Motion should be
denied because there is no jurisdictional basis f or the
Court to entertain Carr's Motion. For the reasons
discussed below, the Court agrees and denies the Motion.
I.
BACKGROUND
Carr
plead guilty to conspiracy to defraud the government, a
violation of 18 U.S.C. § 286, for her role in a scheme
of obtaining payments and submitting false claims for federal
student aid to the U.S. Department of Education. (ECF Nos. 1
& 94.) On January 4, 2018, the undersigned sentenced Carr
to 57 months of incarceration, and three years of supervised
release after imprisonment. (ECF No. 272 at 2; ECF No. 313.)
On
April 1, 2019, the Court received a letter from Carr asking
the Court to reconsider her 57 month sentence. (ECF No. 461
at 4.) She detailed how her incarceration has impacted her
family, and explained the possibility that she will lose
custody of her children as a result of her incarceration. She
also emphasized that she “was led to believe [she]
would be doing 24 months of incarceration” and that she
was “terribly unprepared for a sentence over
that.” (Id.) Carr included a letter from her
oldest daughter and documentation of her youngest son's
medical issues. (Id. at 7-18.)
II.
DISCUSSION
The
Court does not independently have inherent authority to
resentence a defendant. United States v. Blackwell,
81 F.3d 945, 949 (10th Cir. 1996). A federal
district court may modify a defendant's sentence only
where Congress has expressly authorized it to do so.
See 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c); Blackwell, 81
F.3d at 947. Congress has set forth three limited
circumstances in which a court may modify a sentence:
1. Pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A), through a
proceeding initiated by a motion from the Director of the
Bureau of Prisons,
2. Pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(B), where
otherwise provided by statute or Federal Rule of Criminal
Procedure 35, or
3. Pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2), where the
defendant has been sentenced based on a sentencing range
subsequently lowered by the Sentencing Commission.
18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1), (2); see Blackwell, 81
F.3d at 947-48.
The
first and third circumstances clearly do not apply here, as
there is no motion from the Bureau of Prisons or any
indication that the Sentencing Commission has lowered the
sentencing range. Nor has Carr cited any federal statute that
would allow the Court to modify her sentence. The only way in
which Carr's sentence could possibly be modified is if
modification is permitted by Rule 35.
Rule
35(a) states that “[w]ithin 14 days after sentencing,
the court may correct a sentence that resulted from
arithmetical, technical, or other clear error.” Rule
35(c) defines “sentencing” as “the oral
announcement of the sentence.” Rule 35(a)'s 14-day
timeframe is jurisdictional, and so not waivable. See
United States v. McGaughy, 670 F.3d 1149, 1155-59 (10th
Cir. 2012). Here, the Motion was filed 16 months after the
oral announcement of Carr's sentence, and thus the Court
lacks jurisdiction to consider the Motion. Moreover, Carr
does not argue that her sentence resulted from an
arithmetical, technical, or other clear error, and the Court,
reviewing the record, finds no such error. See United
States v. Harris, 358 F.Supp.3d 1202, 1205 (D. Colo.
2019) (“‘clear error,' whatever else it
means, does not appear to include the results of re-weighing
the § 3553(a) factors”). Thus, Rule 35 does not
authorize a substantive modification of Carr's sentence
at this time.
The
Court understands that Carr and her family are at a
significant crossroads in their lives with respect to custody
of Carr's youngest children, and acknowledges the
difficulties that incarceration imposes on a family,
particularly when both parents are subject to federal
custody. Nonetheless, even if the Court were inclined to
modify Carr's sentence, which it imposed over sixteen
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