When—if at all—must a defendant object to the reasonableness of a sentence to preserve that argument for appellate review?

QUESTIONS PRESENTED In the years since United States v. Booker, federal appellate courts have struggled to balance the requirement that they afford district court sentences great deference, while also ensuring meaningful, fair, and predictable appellate review of sentencing decisions. In a trio of cases decided two years after Booker, this Court introduced the “reasonableness” standard now applied by appellate courts to district court sentences. The Court explained that appellate courts must examine both the procedural and substantive reasonableness of a sentence under the deferential abuse of discretion standard. The Court did not address, however, the proper standard of review when the appellant fails to object to the sentence’s reasonableness at sentencing. As a result, a multi-dimensional circuit split has emerged over the standard of review applicable to reasonableness challenges. The Fifth Circuit takes an extreme view: all reasonableness arguments must be made expressly in the district court to avoid plain error review, and a defendant must object to the substantive reasonableness of a sentence after its pronouncement. More broadly, appellate courts have struggled to consistently and fairly apply the reasonableness standard, leading to widely disparate reversal rates on reasonableness grounds, particularly substantive reasonableness. That is particularly apparent in the Fifth Circuit, which, one study found, affirms 99% of sentences challenged as substantively unreasonable. Thus, the questions presented are: ii (1) When—if at all—must a defendant object to the reasonableness of a sentence to preserve that argument for appellate review? (2) What is the proper application of reasonableness review? iii