Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-15-03486/USCOURTS-ca7-15-03486-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Richard Harrington
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 15-3486

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

RICHARD HARRINGTON,

Defendant-Appellant.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 09 CR 814-1 — Amy J. St. Eve, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED AUGUST 9, 2016 — DECIDED AUGUST 19, 2016

____________________

Before BAUER, POSNER, and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. Richard Harrington is a former client of the well-known Chicago-based criminal defense lawyer Beau Brindley, who last year was acquitted in a bench 

trial presided over by Judge Leinenweber of the Northern 

District of Illinois of charges that Brindley had encouraged 

Harrington, a drug dealer, and other clients to lie on the 

stand during their criminal trials. Harrington managed to 

elude conviction in his own trial, but having pleaded guilty 

Case: 15-3486 Document: 30 Filed: 08/19/2016 Pages: 7
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to other charges was sentenced by Judge St. Eve, also of the 

Northern District of Illinois, to 264 months in prison, subsequently reduced because of a retroactive change in the Sentencing Guidelines to 212 months.

Just over a year after Harrington was sentenced, the government asked for his cooperation in its investigation of 

Brindley. After meeting with prosecutors several times, he

testified as a government witness first before the grand jury 

and then for an entire day during Brindley’s two-week trial. 

Despite Brindley’s acquittal the government filed a motion 

under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 35(b)(2)(C) asking 

Judge St. Eve to reduce Harrington’s sentence by 25 percent 

as a reward for his substantial assistance in investigating 

and prosecuting Brindley. But the judge granted only a 14

percent reduction, precipitating this appeal by Harrington. 

Rather oddly, as it seems to us, in this court the government 

is defending Judge St. Eve’s rejection of its request for a larger reduction—not because it is convinced by her reasons 

(which are, as we’re about to see, vulnerable to criticism), 

but because it thinks she has the ultimate authority to decide 

how much of a sentencing reduction to give a cooperating 

witness.

Harrington’s appeal pivots on the judge’s explanation at 

the resentencing hearing for why she was rejecting the government’s request for the larger reduction. She said:

The motion was made under Rule 35, which leaves it to 

the Court’s discretion, if substantial assistance was provided, whether or not to grant a motion for a downward departure.

The substantial assistance—nothing I am saying is 

suggesting that you [one of the prosecutors] did not believe Mr. Harrington was telling the truth. So, I fully beCase: 15-3486 Document: 30 Filed: 08/19/2016 Pages: 7
No. 15-3486 3

lieve that you and the other prosecutors believed Mr. Harrington was telling the truth.

Judge Leinenweber, who is one of the finest trial judges 

in this building, found that the government had not met its 

burden of proof. And I think implicit in that is that Mr. 

Harrington’s testimony didn’t establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Brindley and his co-defendant had 

committed the crimes that they were charged with.

I recognize—and I have not seen the transcript, but 

based on what you are saying, I recognize—that Judge 

Leinenweber did not make any negative findings and did 

not find that you, Mr. Harrington, had lied in his courtroom.

As I made fully known to you when you first presented this motion, it concerns me that you are asking now for 

a benefit for Mr. Harrington having lied to this Court during his trial. I respectfully disagree with you when you 

say, well, everybody has a crime when they come in on a 

Rule 35 and this is no different than that, because certainly 

everybody has the underlying crime that they are convicted of; but, this goes above and beyond. In this courtroom, 

he came in, in addition to the underlying drug crime, and 

lied to the Court when he was testifying.

I also gave Mr. Harrington the benefit of the doubt 

during the original sentencing hearing. The probation officer and the government both asked for an obstruction of 

justice enhancement and a two-level enhancement. And I 

think I made clear at the sentencing that I could have given 

that, but I did not. So, you got the benefit of that, which, 

given your statements now, you certainly were not entitled 

to. So, that gives me concern.

Having said that, I recognize that there is value to encouraging cooperators to come forward when they are in 

this situation; and, I recognize there is value to the government in being able to offer deals and potential lower 

sentences to individuals who are willing to come forward 

to help with difficult prosecutions.

I will grant your motion, but I am not granting it in 

full. I am not giving, for the reasons I have just articulated, 

the full amount that you are asking for in terms of cooperation.

I will grant your motion under Rule 35 and lower Mr. 

Harrington’s sentence from 212 months to 182 months. ...

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Several aspects of this statement are troubling. One is the 

remark that “Harrington’s testimony didn’t establish beyond 

a reasonable doubt that Mr. Brindley and his co-defendant 

had committed the crimes that they were charged with.” 

That is, they were acquitted, which may have had nothing to 

do with Harrington’s testimony. There is no indication that 

he lied at Brindley’s trial or had any incentive to see Brindley acquitted—on the contrary, had Brindley been convicted 

this would have enhanced Harrington’s value to the prosecution and thereby increased the likelihood that the government would go all out, and succeed, in persuading the 

district judge to give him the full 25 percent discount as a 

reward. Since Harrington can’t be blamed for Brindley’s acquittal, we can’t understand how the fact that Brindley was 

acquitted could figure (as it appears to have done) in Judge 

St. Eve’s determination of how large a sentence reduction to 

give Harrington.

Another oddity in the judge's statement is its negative 

reaction to what she described as the prosecutor’s “asking 

now for a benefit for Mr. Harrington having lied to this 

Court during his trial” before Judge St. Eve. That was not 

what the prosecutor was asking for—a reward to Harrington 

for lying. That would be absurd. The prosecutor was asking 

for a reward for Harrington’s efforts to help the government 

make its case against Brindley in a trial unrelated to Harrington’s trial for a drug-related offense. The judge did not say

that she thought Harrington had lied at Brindley’s trial—nor 

had Judge Leinenweber evinced any suspicion of such a 

possibility. Yet her remark about Harrington’s having failed 

to prove Brindley’s guilt suggests that she thought he hadn’t 

tried hard enough, although there is no evidence to back up 

that suggestion. Her intimating that Harrington had failed to 

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No. 15-3486 5

nail Brindley and that his failure was relevant to how large a 

sentence reduction he was entitled to would give cooperating witnesses, such as Harrington, who hope for a sentence 

reduction in exchange for testifying against another criminal 

defendant, an incentive to exaggerate—even perhaps to lie—

in testifying.

Although Harrington cannot be blamed for Brindley’s 

acquittal, Judge St. Eve’s statement explaining her denial of 

the government's motion implies that she thought that the 

size of any sentence reduction to which Harrington would 

be entitled would have to be a function not only of his effort

on the government’s behalf but also of his success. Yet obviously Harrington could not have directed Judge Leinenweber’s verdict. And remember the judge's statement that 

she wasn't giving Harrington the full sentence reduction requested by the government “for the reasons I have just articulated”? One of those reasons was his failure to procure the 

conviction of Brindley.

Also missing from her statement is a satisfactory explanation of why she chose to reduce Harrington’s sentence by

only 14 percent. The 25 percent reduction sought by the government would have reduced his sentence from 212 months 

to 159 months; the judge’s 14 percent reduction reduced it to 

182 months. These are very long sentences—13 years 3 

months and 15 years 2 months, respectively—and one would 

expect the judge to give a reason for deciding to add nearly 

two years to the government’s recommended sentence. She 

did say that in testifying in his trial before her he had “lied 

to the Court.” That could be the basis of a prosecution for 

perjury, but there was no such prosecution. Perjury is a different offense from dealing in illegal drugs. If the judge 

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wanted to sentence Harrington to two years in prison for 

perjury without the benefit of a prosecution for that offense, 

one would expect her to give a reason for having chosen a 

two-year term. One might also have expected her to ask the 

prosecutor how the figure of 25 percent had been arrived at 

in seeking to compensate Harrington and other like-situated 

defendant-cooperating witnesses for assisting the government in prosecuting other criminals.

We’re further puzzled by the judge’s remark that “I also 

gave Mr. Harrington the benefit of the doubt during the 

original sentencing hearing. The probation officer and the 

government both asked for an obstruction of justice enhancement and a two-level enhancement. And I think I 

made clear at the sentencing that I could have given that, but 

I did not. So, you [Mr. Harrington] got the benefit of that, 

which, given your statements now, you certainly were not 

entitled to.” It seems that the judge was expressing regret for 

having refused the government’s requests for an obstruction 

of justice adjustment and a two-level enhancement (she does 

not say what the two-level enhancement would have been 

for), and that one reason for in effect adding two years to his 

sentence by reducing it by only 14 percent was to compensate the government for her having turned down its two earlier requests. But she doesn’t indicate why she thought those 

requests had she granted them would have justified two 

more years of imprisonment for Harrington under the statutory sentencing factors, see United States v. Webster, 666 F.3d 

1023, 1026 (7th Cir. 2012), and why his "statements now"

showed that he should have gotten the enhancements.

Moreover, the government was not seeking such compensation––that is, a lower reduction in his sentence to compensate for his not having been subjected to the enhancements.

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No. 15-3486 7

We don’t mean to suggest that Judge St. Eve, a very experienced, conscientious, and highly regarded judge, in fact 

erred in denying Harrington the full 25 percent sentence reduction that the government sought. She may or may not 

have. But a lack of clarity in her statement explaining that 

ruling leaves us unable to understand the reasoning process 

that led her to reject the government’s request for a 25 percent sentence reduction. Given our uncertainty we think it 

best to vacate the district court’s judgment and remand for 

reconsideration of the government's motion.

VACATED AND REMANDED.

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