Noel Mercado was convicted of two counts of transporting an illegal alien within the United States and sentenced to two concurrent terms of 36 months imprisonment and three years of supervised release. During the sentencing process, the probation officer prepared multiple drafts of the Presentence Investigation Report (PSR). While earlier drafts had recommended an obstruction of justice enhancement under U.S.S.G. § 3C1.1 based on purportedly false testimony, the final draft correctly determined that the enhancement did not apply because Mercado was found to be truthful. However, a clerical error occurred: Paragraph 10 of the final PSR, which detailed the false testimony and the reason for the adjustment, was inadvertently left in the document despite the obstruction adjustment being removed from the guidelines range calculation. The Statement of Reasons appended to the PSR noted that Paragraph 10 was not applicable, but the text of the paragraph itself remained unamended. Mercado did not move to correct this error in the district court but raised it on appeal, with the government agreeing that the mistake warranted correction.
The Fifth Circuit analyzed the case under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 36, which authorizes a court to correct clerical errors in a judgment, order, or other part of the record at any time. The court emphasized that Rule 36 is designed to rectify 'mindless and mechanistic mistakes' rather than substantive legal errors. The opinion clarified that the PSR is considered 'part of the record' that may be corrected under this rule. The court noted that both parties agreed the inclusion of Paragraph 10 in the final PSR was a clerical oversight, as the obstruction enhancement had already been properly excluded from the sentencing calculation. Citing precedent such as United States v. Powell and United States v. Mackay, the court affirmed that it has the authority to remand for the correction of such errors even when raised for the first time on appeal. The court declined to articulate a standard of review, following its practice in similar cases where the parties agree on the nature of the error.
The case is remanded to the district court with instructions to amend the PSR to remove Paragraph 10, ensuring the official record accurately reflects that the obstruction enhancement was not applied. This correction aligns the PSR with the actual sentence imposed and the court's findings. The defendant's conviction and term of imprisonment remain unchanged, and no new sentencing hearing is required. The decision leaves open the question of whether Rule 36 applies to other types of record discrepancies, but confirms its utility for fixing clear clerical mistakes in sentencing documents.
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