Opinion ID: 2967632
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Policies Underlying the Guidelines

Text: Finally, we consider whether a rule requiring concurrent sentences for grouped offenses would be consistent with the purposes underlying the guidelines. We believe it would not. 8 UNITED STATES v. CHASE Congress enacted the Sentencing Reform Act, which led to the enactment of the guidelines, in part to create a system that imposes appropriately different sentences for criminal conduct of differing severity. U.S.S.G. ch. 1, pt. A(3). In accord with this goal, the drafters of the guidelines adopted grouping rules to provide incremental punishment for significant additional criminal conduct. U.S.S.G. ch. 3, pt. D, intro. comment. A rule prohibiting stacked sentences for grouped offenses would interfere with this effort by limiting the range of punishments available to the sentencing court. Furthermore, this rule would have a predictable and entirely undesirable bias in favor of more culpable offenders. Under the guidelines, a defendant’s sentencing range is increased if, inter alia, he played a leadership role in multi-defendant crimes, see U.S.S.G. § 3B1.1; he obstructed justice during the investigation of his offenses, see U.S.S.G. § 3C1.1; or he has an extensive criminal record, see generally U.S.S.G. ch. 4, pt. A. As the sentencing range increases in severity, it becomes more likely that the district court will need to resort to stacking in order to achieve an appropriate sentence within the guideline range. If stacking for grouped offenses were prohibited, then two defendants guilty of multiple crimes might receive roughly the same sentence even though one was subject to a higher guideline range as a result of more harmful conduct or a more egregious criminal history. A rule that favors more culpable criminals over their less culpable confederates does not promote justice. While countervailing considerations might justify adoption of such a rule, we are not aware of any considerations that would warrant a prohibition against stacking sentences for grouped offenses. Moreover, as discussed earlier, there is no evidence that the guidelines contain such a prohibition. For all of these reasons, we hold that the district court could have sentenced Chase to consecutive terms totaling 360 months. In fact, § 5G1.2 would have required consecutive sentences if necessary to achieve the total punishment. See Angle, 254 F.3d at 518 (Had the district court been aware when it sentenced [the defendant] that the maximum penalty for his drug trafficking conviction was 20 years, § 5G1.2(d) would have obligated it to achieve the guideline sentence of 292 months imprisonment by imposing a term of 240 months or less on each count of conviction and ordering those terms to be served conUNITED STATES v. CHASE 9 secutively to achieve the total punishment mandated by the guidelines.). Accordingly, the imposition of a single 360-month term for conspiracy, although erroneous, was harmless.