Opinion ID: 1238399
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Departure for obstruction of justice

Text: In its calculation of Arhebamen's base offense level, the district court applied a two-level enhancement under § 3C1.1 of the Sentencing Guidelines for providing materially false testimony during the trial. The district court supported the enhancement for obstruction of justice by enumerating four instances where Arhebamen perjured himself: (1) false statements regarding his name, birth date, and place of birth; (2) false claims about having informed his probation officer about his use of the name Mark Arhebamen; (3) a false statement that Judge Rosen's clerk had told him not to worry about appearing for his sentencing in the tax-fraud case, and (4) a false claim that he had taken correspondence courses from Oxford University Press. In addition to the § 3C1.1 obstruction enhancement, the district court applied a two-level upward departure pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 5K2.0, stating that [t]he extent of [Arhebamen's] willful and obstructive behavior ... is not adequately taken into consideration by the 2 level enhancement of § 3C1.1. The court reasoned that Arhebamen's obstructive behavior fell outside the heartland of cases considered by the Sentencing Guidelines because he not only committed perjury at trial, but also: (1) filed many appeals of unappealable orders during the trial, (2) refused to accept case-related documents that his counsel offered to Arhebamen for reviewbehavior that resulted in a contempt order that was later purged, and (3) filed a meritless request for the district judge to recuse himself. According to the court, this behavior warranted the two-level § 5K2.0 upward departure in addition to the two-level § 3C1.1 obstruction enhancement because such conduct demonstrates a pattern of abuse of the judicial system by [Arhebamen] and ... related directly to his attempts to exert undue influence on the ... proceedings. Section 5K2.0 provides that the district court may impose a sentence outside the range established by the applicable guidelines where there exists an aggravating or mitigating circumstance of a kind, or to a degree, not adequately taken into consideration by the Sentencing Commission. Departures under this section therefore fall into two categoriesdepartures based on facts of a different kind than those taken into account by the underlying Guidelines and departures where the relevant circumstance is present to an unusually large or small degree. The district court here did not opine that Arhebamen had perjured himself at trial to an unusual degree, but rather concluded that Arhebamen's meritless appeals and frivolous motions, together with his refusal to accept documents offered by his attorney, warranted the § 5K2.0 departure. In other words, this case falls in the first category of departures purportedly based on circumstances of a kind not contemplated by the underlying obstruction-of-justice Guideline. Arhebamen argues that the relevant extraordinary facts here are not of a kind that warrants a § 5K2.0 departure. We agree. In essence, the district court applied the § 5K2.0 departure because Arhebamen's abysmal lawyering on his own behalf unnecessarily delayed the proceedings against him. The district court cited two cases in support of its decision to add a § 5K2.0 departure onto the § 3C1.1 obstruction enhancement. One of the cases is United States v. Furkin, 119 F.3d 1276, 1284 (7th Cir.1997), where the court affirmed a § 5K2.0 departure because the defendant's conduct was far more severe than the ordinary case where the obstruction of justice enhancement applies. The defendant in that case had instructed three witnesses to lie to the grand jury, had encouraged two others to sign back-dated leases, and had intimidated another. Id. at 1283-84. He also hid the profits of his illegal gambling business. Id. at 1284. Such conduct, according to the court, constituted obstruction to a greater degree than in the usual § 3C1.1 obstruction-enhancement case. Id. Arhebamen's case, by contrast, involves a departure based on conduct of an entirely different kind than his obstruction-enhancement conduct of perjury. The second case cited by the district court, United States v. Ventura, 146 F.3d 91 (2d Cir.1998), is more on point because it is an of a kind case like Arhebamen's. In Ventura, the district court first enhanced the sentence pursuant to § 3C1.1 due to the defendant's failure to appear at sentencing, and then departed upward under § 5K2.0 because the defendant also submitted a fraudulent birth certificate. Id. at 96. The Second Circuit affirmed, noting that departure may be especially justified where, as here, the defendant obstructed justice more than once through wholly discrete and unrelated acts. Id. at 97. Another case, United States v. Black, 78 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir.1996), has been cited by the government in support of the departure. In Black, the defendant perjured himself at trial, resulting in a § 3C1.1 enhancement, and also attempted to hide assets in order to frustrate the collection of a fine or restitution. Id. The First Circuit upheld the district court's imposition of a § 5K2.0 departure for the latter conduct because it amounted to a different act of obstruction. Id. at 6. Both Ventura and Black rested their § 5K2.0 departures upon separate acts of obstructive conduct similar to those set forth in § 3C1.1. Here, by contrast, the additional conduct relied upon by the district courtArhebamen's filing of meritless appeals and recusal motions as well as his refusal to accept documents offered by his attorneyare not remotely analogous to the examples of obstructive behavior listed in § 3C1.1, which include perjury, failure to appear for a proceeding, providing false statements to judges and other officials, tampering with witnesses, and the like. Arhebamen's acts were basically those of an overzealous pro se advocate. Although such behavior is undoubtedly annoying from the district court's point of view, it is not obstructive in the sense suggested by § 3C1.1. Our dissenting colleague, however, describes Arhebamen's conduct as a deliberate effort to delay and frustrate court proceedings that was so egregious as to be outside the heartland of similar cases. (Dissenting Op. at 304) In our view, these characterizations are simply not supported by the record. Moreover, Application Note 7 to § 3C1.1 makes clear that the enhancement under that provision should not be applied in cases where the charged offense is also an obstruction offense, except if a significant further obstruction occurred during the investigation, prosecution, or sentencing of the obstruction offense itself ( e.g., if the defendant threatened a witness during the course of the prosecution for the obstruction offense). Arhebamen's perjury at his trial presumptively qualifies as an obstruction offense, although we need not decide that issue because Arhebamen does not challenge the application of the § 3C1.1 enhancement itself. But in light of the high bar for § 3C1.1's application in this type of case, we conclude that the district court's decision to tack an additional departure under § 5K2.0 onto § 3C1.1 was erroneous. The Sentencing Commission makes no provision for upward departures based upon a pro se defendant's meritless filingshowever vexatious, numerous, or annoying. Nor does any case to our knowledge endorse such a departure. We therefore conclude that a § 5K2.0 departure may not be based on a defendant's poor performance as a pro se advocate regardless of the district court's conclusion that the defendant's conduct obstructed the proceedings. Such a departure amounted to a procedural error in the form of failing to calculate (or improperly calculating) the Guidelines range.... Gall, 128 S.Ct. at 597.