Opinion ID: 577111
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Criminal History Upward Departure

Text: 125 Jakobetz also challenges the upward departure in his criminal history from category IV to VI. He argues that the district court failed to follow the procedures governing criminal history departures articulated by this circuit and, consequently, the court did not state its reasons for the departure with the necessary specificity. Jakobetz essentially argues that the court below erred by not assigning specific point values to each prior incident used to support the criminal history departure. For the following reasons, we disagree. 126 While it is true that the guidelines require a sentencing court to assign specific point values to prior convictions when that court is determining a defendant's initial criminal history category, see U.S.S.G. § 4A1.1, such specificity is not required in making a criminal history departure. Instead, the two-part procedure we have adopted to guide the district courts in making upward departures based on prior conduct requires the sentencing judge to first determine the criminal history category that best represents the offender's prior conduct and use the sentencing range for that category in making the departure. The inquiry, however, does not end there. The district court must then proceed sequentially through the categories, beginning with the defendant's original criminal history category and then proceeding in order through the higher categories, considering whether the next higher category adequately reflected the seriousness of the defendant's record and, only upon finding it inadequate, moving on to a still higher category. See U.S. v. Coe, 891 F.2d 405, 412-13 (2d Cir.1989). This procedure serves to guide the district court's discretion in making an upward departure. 127 It does not, however, require the sentencing judge to assign specific point values to the conduct evaluated for the purposes of criminal history departures. Comparisons to the point system set forth in § 4A1.1 may assist this court in evaluating the reasonableness of a district court's departure, see, e.g., U.S. v. Cervantes, 878 F.2d 50, 55 (2nd Cir.1989) (prior bail-jumping conduct would probably account for no more than two or three Criminal History points if it had been sentenced under § 4A1.1), but for some conduct to be considered under § 4A1.3, there are no such counterparts available. Id. at 55 (no § 4A1.1 provision precisely applicable to § 4A1.3 provision allowing for departure if defendant was pending trial at time of instant offense). A strict requirement that the district courts affix point values to their findings, then, is of little use when the guidelines themselves fail to do so. The two-step procedure set forth in Cervantes and Coe, when properly followed, should provide this court with sufficient information to assess the reasonableness of the district court's departure. 128 We think that in this case Judge Billings articulated with sufficient clarity the factual findings that underlay his decision to make an upward departure of two criminal history categories. He properly considered a prior sexual assault not resulting in a conviction as similar adult criminal conduct. See § 4A1.3(e). If Jakobetz had received a sentence for this conduct, he likely would have received three criminal history points. See U.S.S.G. § 4A1.1. (a). Moreover, the court's consideration of the pending narcotics and DWI charges that Jakobetz faced while committing the crime in this case merits at least a one-point departure, given § 4A1.3(d)'s provision that such pending charges may be considered in making upward departures. 129 Jakobetz, however, argues that the 1989 DWAI offense cannot be used as one of those pending charges in making an upward departure in his criminal history category because the district court counted that sentence when it calculated his original criminal history score. Even if Jakobetz were correct that the DWAI offense was doublecounted, however, the narcotics offense would still remain as an adequate basis for the departure based on the pending charge. Given these considerations, the lower court's decision to increase Jakobetz' criminal history by two criminal history categories constituted a reasonable upward departure.