In United States v. Sharma, --- F.4th ---, No. 23-616 (9th Cir. 2024), the Court affirmed the defendant's sentence over his facial due-process challenge to Congressionally directed Sentencing Guidelines enhancements for (1) using a computer to commit a child pornography offense, U.S.S.G. § 2G2.2(b)(6); and (2) the number of images involved in the offense, U.S.S.G. § 2G2.2(b)(7).
The Court held that the defendant did not establish that Congress acted irrationally when it directed the enhancements, nor did he establish that changed circumstances have so drastically altered the application of the enhancements to make them irrational today.
The Court, however, left open the possibility of a future substantive reasonableness challenge based on the application of these enhancements.Although the computer-usage and image-number sentencing enhancements in child pornography offenses may be debatable on policy grounds, those debates are not the concern of a court conducting rational basis review. We ask only if a defendant has established that the enhancements lack a rational relationship to a legitimate government interest. We hold that Sharma fails to do so here.
