Opinion ID: 1039276
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Complexity and Duration of Proceedings

Text: Gushlak also points to 18 U.S.C. § 3663A(c)(3)(B), which provides that the MVRA shall not apply . . . if the court finds, from facts on the record, that . . . determining complex issues of fact related to the cause or amount of the victim's losses would complicate or prolong the sentencing process to a degree that the need to provide restitution to any victim is outweighed by the burden on the sentencing process. Id. He argues that the district court should have declined to order restitution on this basis. We review a district court's application of section 3663A(c)(3)(B) to the facts of a particular case for abuse of 15 discretion.5 In re W.R. Huff Asset Mgmt. Co., LLC, 409 F.3d 555, 563-64 (2d Cir. 2005). Although we have encountered section 3663A(c)(3)(B) only sporadically, we have from time to time discussed the sort of factors that might inform a district court's balancing of the need to provide restitution to any victim against the burden on the sentencing process, 18 U.S.C. § 3663A(c)(3)(B). Our most expansive discussion of the issue appears to be that provided in United States v. Reifler. There, after vacating an MVRA award on other grounds, we directed the district court to consider section 3663A(c)(3)(B) on remand. Reifler, 446 F.3d at 139. We grounded our analysis in what we understood to be Congress's purposes in enacting section 3663(c)(3)(B). They were to ensure that the process of determining an appropriate order of restitution be 'streamlined,' id. at 136 (quoting S. Rep. No. 104-179, at 20, 21 5 The government argues that Gushlak failed to raise section 3663A(c)(3)(B) before the district court, and that we should therefore review for plain error. We doubt very much, upon review of the record, that Gushlak failed adequately to alert the district court to his concerns regarding the duration and complexity of the restitution proceedings. We need not resolve the question, however, inasmuch as we conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in awarding restitution despite the complexities of doing so. 16 (1995), reprinted in 1996 U.S.C.C.A.N. 924, 933-34), and 'that the sentencing phase[s] of criminal trials [would] not become fora for the determination of facts and issues better suited to civil proceedings,' id. at 137 (quoting S. Rep. No. 104179, at 18). We noted, in light of the diverse class of alleged victims and the circumstances of the fraud in that case, difficult questions as to both the causation requirement and the requirements for determining the timing and the amounts of the losses caused. Id. at 135. That it would be difficult to determine a victim's actual loss on the basis of dates and prices that were not hypothetical, assumed, or arbitrary . . . clearly implicate[d] section 3663A(c)(3)(B). Id. at 13839; see also W.R. Huff Asset Mgmt., 409 F.3d at 563-64 (affirming district court's decision not to award restitution on section 3663A(c)(3)(B) grounds). But section 3663A(c)(3)(B) plainly does not require the district court to surrender whenever one or more complex issues of causation or loss calculation appear. To the contrary, the statute explicitly contemplates that the district court weigh against the burden of ordering restitution the victims' interests in receiving restitution. And it commits the balancing to the district court's discretion, likely because it implicates what the Supreme Court has referred to as supervision of litigation, Pierce v. Underwood, 487 U.S. 552, 558 n.1 (1988), and because it requires a detailed understanding of and sensitivity to the 17 facts of each case; in other words, because it is the sort of task to which district courts are better suited. Deference to the district court's consideration of the issue is therefore typically warranted if the record indicates that the district court, although aware of the difficulties involved in ordering restitution[,] . . . considered restitution an essential part of [the defendant's] sentence, Catoggio, 326 F.3d at 328. So it is here. The record makes clear that the district court was keenly aware of the difficulties of calculating restitution in this case. It was also of the view, however, based on its decade-long supervision of the matter, that the need to compensate victims outweighed challenges of measurement. After all, as the district court found, Gushlak ha[d] admitted to stealing from a large number of people what likely amounted to a significant portion of their personal wealth. Gushlak, 2011 WL 3159170 at , 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 81525 at . We think it worth noting again, moreover, that the district court entered an appealable judgment while restitution proceedings were pending so as to enable Gushlak to appeal from his conviction and sentence as quickly as possible. If this Court were to have vacated the conviction, then, it would have done so in a reasonably timely manner and, in the bargain, perhaps rendered further restitution proceedings unnecessary. This bolsters our view that the 18 district court exercised its discretion with the aims of the MVRA and Gushlak's interests and rights firmly in mind. We therefore conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in awarding restitution despite the complexity and duration of the restitution proceedings.