Opinion ID: 4394859
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Ninth and Tenth Circuits’ Decisions

Text: In contrast to these decisions, the Ninth and Tenth Circuits have determined that district courts must engage in some level of disaggregation as to the harms caused by the original abuse versus the harms caused by later distributors and possessors before awarding restitution against a particular possessor of child pornography. See United States v. Galan, 804 F.3d 1287 (9th Cir. 2015); United States v. Dunn, 777 F.3d 1171 (10th Cir. 2015). But even those post-Paroline decisions are nuanced and do not adopt a rigid, mathematical rule in that regard. Furthermore, the facts of the Tenth Circuit’s Dunn case are important to understand what the Tenth Circuit did or did not conclude in that case. In Dunn, one victim sought restitution of $583,955, which represented her total losses minus the amount of restitution already received from other defendants. 48 Case: 17-12349 Date Filed: 05/08/2019 Page: 49 of 67 See Dunn, 777 F.3d at 1174, 1179. Because Dunn was a distributor of the images, the district court determined that “he should be held jointly and severally liable for the entirety of [the victim’s] injuries.” Id. at 1179. The victim’s total losses were $1,330,015, and the district court held Dunn responsible for $583,955 of those total losses as the amount not yet paid. See id. at 1181. In reversing, the Tenth Circuit emphasized that the district court held the defendant Dunn liable for all of the victim’s unpaid losses, including those caused by the initial abuser, and erred by not assessing Dunn’s individual relative role in the causal process underlying the victim’s losses. See id. at 1181. The Tenth Circuit concluded: “[T]o the extent that the district court relied on an expert report that did not disaggregate [the harms caused by the original abuser], the district court’s adoption of $1.3 million as the total measure of damages cannot stand.” Id. at 1182.6 The disaggregation conclusion in Dunn must be read in the factual context of a reversal of a district court’s ruling that a defendant was jointly and 6 Though it has not addressed whether district courts must disaggregate, the First Circuit has held that a district court order comported with Paroline’s framework where it “excluded past costs and based its award on an estimate of [the victim’s] future therapy costs, occasioned by defendant’s conduct.” United States v. Rogers, 758 F.3d 37, 39 (1st Cir. 2014). The district court also “limited the losses to general losses from ‘continuing’ traffic” in the victim’s images and “distinguished the future therapy losses attributable to defendant from the harm resulting from other viewers and from [the victim’s] therapy needs relating to [the original abuser].” Id. The First Circuit commented that the district court’s $3,150 restitution award “represent[ed] the cost of 18 therapy visits,” but the district court “noted that 50 visits would also have been a reasonable conclusion.” Id. The mere fact that this type of formal disaggregation is permissible under Paroline, however, does not mean that it is required. 49 Case: 17-12349 Date Filed: 05/08/2019 Page: 50 of 67 severally liable with all other defendants, including the abuser, for the entirety of the victim’s $1,330,015 total losses, minus only what other defendants had already paid. We read Dunn as requiring disaggregation in that case because the defendant was held jointly and severally liable with the abuser for the entirety of the losses; we do not read Dunn as requiring disaggregation in each and every restitution case. Unlike Dunn’s recounting of the restitution facts, the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Galan does not indicate the amounts of the victim’s losses or even the restitution award at issue. Galan, 804 F.3d at 1288. Rather, Galan recounts only these two facts: (1) the defendant Galan was not the victim’s original abuser, who “made images of his disgusting crimes against [the victim] over an extended period” of time; and (2) that abuse ended about 11 years before Galan possessed the images. See id. In reversing, the Ninth Circuit went much further than the Tenth. The Ninth Circuit held “that in calculating the amount of restitution to be imposed upon a defendant who was convicted of distribution or possession of child pornography, the losses, including ongoing losses, caused by the original abuse of the victim should be disaggregated from the losses caused by the ongoing distribution and possession of images of that original abuse, to the extent possible.” Id. at 1291. The Ninth Circuit concluded “that Galan should not be required to pay for losses caused by the original abuser’s actions.” Id. at 1290. The Ninth Circuit 50 Case: 17-12349 Date Filed: 05/08/2019 Page: 51 of 67 determined, in effect, that some type of calculation should be made between original abusers on the one hand and the distributors and possessors on the other. See id. at 1288, 1290. Importantly, however, the Ninth Circuit cautioned that it “express[ed] no opinion about what portion of the victim’s ongoing loss should be attributable to an original abuser.” Id. at 1291. It also did not instruct how the disaggregation calculation should be done, and it even added that “[i]f the ultimate apportionment is not scientifically precise, we can only say that precision is neither expected nor required.” Id.