Case ID: f-appx_586/html/0064-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Paul HAGERMAN, Defendant-Appellant.
    No. 13-4854-cr.
    United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.
    Dec. 4, 2014.
    Richard A. Friedman, Appellate Section, Criminal Division, United States Department of Justice (Tamara Thomson, Assistant United States Attorney, Northern District of New York, on the brief), for Richard Hartunian, United States Attorney for the Northern District of New York, David O’Neil, Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General, and Leslie R. Caldwell, Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division, United States Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for Appellee.
    Molly Corbett, Research and Writing Specialist, Gene V. Primono, Assistant Federal Public Defender, for Lisa Peebles, Acting Federal Public Defender for the Northern District of New York, Albany, NY, for Defendant-Appellant.
    Present: ROBERT A. KATZMANN, Chief Judge, PETER W. HALL, DEBRA ANN LIVINGSTON, Circuit Judges.
   SUMMARY ORDER

Defendant-Appellant Paul Hagerman appeals from an amended judgment of conviction dated December 13, 2013 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York (Suddaby, /.), following his guilty plea to one count of receiving child pornography and one count of possessing child pornography, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2252A(a)(2)(A) & (B). We assume the parties’ familiarity with the underlying facts, procedural history, and issues on appeal.

Hagerman had previously appealed both his sentence, which we affirmed, and the initial restitution awarded to a victim of his crimes under 18 U.S.C. § 2259, which we reversed and remanded. See United States v. Hagerman, 506 Fed.Appx. 14 (2d Cir.2012) (summary order). In this appeal, Hagerman challenges the new restitution award of $3,281. “We review restitution orders deferentially and will reverse only for abuse of discretion.” United States v. Paul, 634 F.3d 668, 676 (2d Cir.2011) (internal quotation marks omitted). We reversed the initial restitution award because of an error in its calculation, but we upheld both the district court’s per capita method of calculating restitution by dividing the victim’s total losses by the number of defendants successfully prosecuted as well as the district court’s finding that Hagerman proximately caused a portion of the losses. See Hagerman, 506 Fed.Appx. at 18-19.

Hagerman argues that these conclusions were upended by two recent Supreme Court decisions: Burrage v. United States, — U.S.-, 134 S.Ct. 881, 187 L.Ed.2d 715 (2014), and Paroline v. United States, — U.S.-, 134 S.Ct. 1710, 188 L.Ed.2d '714 (2014). Burrage held that but-for causation was required by a provision of the Controlled Substances Act analogous to section 2259, which might arguably have supported Hagerman’s appeal. But Paro-line interpreted the very provision at issue here-the definition of a victim as “ ‘the individual harmed as a result of a commission of a crime under this chapter.’ ” Paro-line, 134 S.Ct. at 1720 (quoting section 2259). In so doing, the Supreme Court unmistakably endorsed the proximate causation analysis that we affirmed in Hager-man’s first appeal, stating that “the victim’s costs of treatment and lost income resulting from the trauma of knowing that images of her abuse are being viewed over and over are direct and foreseeable results ' of child-pornography crimes, including possession, assuming the prerequisite of factual causation is satisfied.” Id. at 1722. We have no doubt that both proximate and factual causation were established here.

Paroline continued: “[W]here it can be shown both that a defendant possessed a victim’s images and that a victim has outstanding losses caused by the continuing traffic in those images but where it is impossible to trace a particular amount of those losses to the individual defendant by recourse to a more traditional causal inquiry, a court applying § 2259 should order restitution in an amount that comports with the defendant’s relative role in the causal process that underlies the victim’s general losses.” Id. at 1727. In this case, the district court found that the entirety of the victim’s losses were a direct result of her knowledge that unidentified individuals had downloaded and trafficked in pornographic images of her abuse, and that factual finding was not clearly erroneous. To arrive at Hagerman’s individual contribution, the district court then divided the victim’s total losses by the number of criminal defendants who contributed to those losses by possessing the victim’s images. Hagerman did not object to this calculation method below, and in light of the Supreme Court’s guidance in Paroline, we perceive no “clear or obvious” legal error that would render the district court’s approach an abuse of discretion. United States v. Marcus, 560 U.S. 258, 262, 130 S.Ct. 2159, 176 L.Ed.2d 1012 (2010). The resulting award was neither “severe ... [nor] a token or nominal amount,” Paroline, 134 S.Ct. at 1727, but was well “within the range of permissible decisions,” Paul, 634 F.3d at 676 (internal quotation marks omitted).

We have considered Hagerman’s remaining arguments and find them to be without merit. For the reasons stated herein, the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED. 
      
       Because the Supreme Court had not issued its opinion in Paroline when Hagerman filed this appeal, his arguments about Paroline are based only on the briefs filed in that case.