Whether the powers of federal appellate courts are diminished and whether a defendant is deprived of his fundamental right to appellate review

ISSUES PRESENTED FOR REVIEW 1. Whether the powers of federal appellate courts are diminished and whether a defendant is deprived of his fundamental right to appellate review when an appellate court’s stated errors in a mandate regarding a criminal sentence do not have any binding effect on the district court and the district court may therefore refuse to correct the errors on remand? 2. Whether the appellate standard of review of “substantive reasonableness” of a criminal sentence requires a federal appellate court to deferentially review and weigh the district court’s reasons for its sentence, or is the standard of review met solely by determining whether the sentence is within an unspecified range of the mathematical average of sentences imposed by other courts for the same crime? 3. Whether a sentence that the majority conceded is “barbaric” is also, by definition, substantively unreasonable? ii PARTIES TO PROCEEDINGS The Petitioner in this Court is Jesse Sawyer. The Respondent is the United States of America. iii