to be binding. Thus, after making findings as to the pertinent sentencing factors, the court sentenced Williams within the resulting Guidelines range without realizing that it had the discretion to sentence outside of that range even if, for example, the circumstances did not meet the relatively narrow criteria for a departure from the Guidelines. See 18 U.S.C. § 3553(b)(1); U.S.S.G. § 5K2.0. In retrospect, with the benefit of the Supreme Court’s decision in Booker, we now know that it was error to treat the Guidelines as binding, and because Williams’ case was pending on direct review when Booker was decided, he may claim the benefit of its remedial holding. Booker, 125 S.Ct. at 769; United States v. Schlifer, 403 F.3d 849, 853 (7th Cir.2005); see also Castillo, 406 F.3d at 823 (<HOLDING>) (quoting United States v. White, 406 F.3d 827,
holding that there is no nonconstitutional error under booker where the district court sentencing in the alternative sufficiently considered the guidelines as well as the other factors listed in  3553a recognizing that booker error may occur even in the absence of judicial factfinding where district court treats guidelines as mandatory holding that even in the absence of a sixth amendment violation the imposition of a sentence under the former mandatory guidelines regime rather than under the advisory regime outlined in booker is plain error holding booker error is avoided when district court calculates proper guidelines sentencing range treats guidelines as advisory and imposes reasonable sentence holding that even without booker constitutional error in the district courts application of the guidelines there could be nonconstitutional error where the court applied the guidelines in a mandatory fashion