Opinion ID: 1422861
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Guidelines upward departures

Text: Erpenbeck also argues that his sentence is substantively unreasonably because the district court (1) improperly relied on Guidelines departures for property damage or loss, pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 5K2.5, and for extreme psychological injury to the victims, pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 5K2.3, and (2) improperly evaluated the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factors, resulting in a sentence that was greater than necessary to comply with the purposes of the statute. The Guidelines policy statement on departures, however, makes clear that departures are discretionary and that a sentencing court may impose a sentence outside the range established by the applicable Guidelines where there are circumstances of a kind or degree that are not adequately taken into consideration under the Guidelines. U.S.S.G. § 5K2.0. When determining whether a departure from the Guidelines range is warranted, a district court must consider the following four questions: 1) What features of this case, potentially, take it outside the Guidelines' `heartland' and make of it a special, or unusual, case? 2) Has the Commission forbidden departures based on those features? 3) If not, has the Commission encouraged departures based on those features? 4) If not, has the Commission discouraged departures based on those features? Koon v. United States, 518 U.S. 81, 95, 116 S.Ct. 2035, 135 L.Ed.2d 392 (1996) (citation omitted); see also United States v. Meeker, 411 F.3d 736, 746-47 (6th Cir.2005) (quoting Koon ). We review a district court's decision to depart upward under the advisory Guidelines under the same standards we use to judge the procedural and substantive reasonableness of a variance from any [g]uidelines range. United States v. Vowell, 516 F.3d 503, 510 (6th Cir.2008) (internal quotation marks omitted) (alterations in original). This means that a district court's sentencing determination is reviewed under a deferential abuse-of-discretion standard for reasonableness. Gall v. United States, ___ U.S. ___, 128 S.Ct. 586, 591, 169 L.Ed.2d 445 (2007); United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220, 261-62, 125 S.Ct. 738, 160 L.Ed.2d 621 (2005). If we find that the district court committed an error, however, a remand is unnecessary if the error was harmless i.e. [,] any such error `did not affect the district court's selection of the sentence imposed.' United States v. Hazelwood, 398 F.3d 792, 801 (6th Cir.2005) ( quoting Williams v. United States, 503 U.S. 193, 203, 112 S.Ct. 1112, 117 L.Ed.2d 341 (1992)).