Opinion ID: 151874
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Husband, Father, and Member of the Community

Text: While considering the the history and characteristics of the defendant component of § 3553(a)(1), the district court also weighed in Irey's favor his status as a family man and member of the community: By all accounts, Mr. Irey has been a good husband and father for his wife and children and a good friend to his friends and a good person to his community. The lies and thefts, I think, referred to by Ms. Hawkins were essentially part of his effort to cover up his illness, because I think other than the acts of Mr. Irey, there's no indication that he has engaged in any other sort of criminal conduct or conduct representing poor character. That is unreasonable and a clear error in judgment on several different levels. To begin with, the judge's reasoning is like saying that other than the fact he had an illness that made him want to kill young women, Ted Bundy was a pretty nice guy and a valuable member of his community. That not only could have been said about Bundy, but something like it actually was said. See Ann Rule, The Stranger Beside Me 33-34 (2000) (describing how the author worked beside Bundy at a crisis clinic with a suicide prevention line, where Bundy served the community well: If, as many people believe today, Ted Bundy took lives, he also saved lives. I know he did, because I was there when he did.). The district court's reasoning is also like saying that but for his taste for human flesh and how he satisfied it, Jeffrey Dahmer was not so bad. See Lionel Dahmer, A Father's Story 47 (1994) (describing how Jeffrey Dahmer had helped rescue a baby bird that had fallen from the nest and had nursed it back to health). By the simple expedient of assuming away or putting out of mind all the criminal acts that they have committed, one may describe many, if not most, criminals as good people without any other sort of criminal conduct or conduct representing poor character. Irey did not merely slip up and commit one criminal act. He persistently flew halfway around the world on a regular basis for four or five years and many many times raped, sodomized, and sexually tortured helpless children. And he recorded his sexual abuse and debasement of the little children in photographs and videos for his own personal enjoyment and to share with others. No one who commits such heinous crimes has good character regardless of whether the criminal, while he was not raping, sodomizing, and torturing helpless children, was a good father, or husband, or member of his local community (as distinguished from the world community). It was unreasonable and a clear error in judgment to vary downward for Irey on the theory that he has good character. See Martin, 455 F.3d at 1239-40 (disapproving the sentencing court's emphasis on the defendant's lack of a criminal record and the aberrational nature of his crimes, which the guidelines had already taken into account, and pointing out that his criminal conduct spanned a period of years and caused much harm). The Fourth Circuit had a somewhat similar situation before it in United States v. Abu Ali, 528 F.3d 210, 258-59 (4th Cir. 2008), where the sentencing court in a case involving attempted terrorism had varied downward from a guidelines range sentence of life to a sentence of 30 years after considering, among other things, the many letters it had received describing Abu Ali's `general decent reputation as a young man' and his overall `good character.' Id. at 268. Vacating the 30-year sentence as unreasonably lenient, the Fourth Circuit was unmoved by those letters, explaining: What person of decent reputation seeks to assassinate leaders of countries? What person of good character aims to destroy thousands of fellow human beings who are innocent of any transgressions against him? This is not good character as we understand it, and to allow letters of this sort to provide the basis for such a substantial variance would be to deprive good character of all its content. Id. Likewise here. What person of good character commits the horrific crimes that Irey did against at least fifty different children and on many many occasions over a four- or five-year period, stopping only when he is finally caught? What the Fourth Circuit said applies as well to this case and what Irey did: This is not good character as we understand it. If Irey is a person of good character, the term has no meaning worth mentioning. The facts about Irey as a husband, father, and member of the community are not disputed, the question is how to weigh them for sentencing purposes. The uncontroverted facts are that as a husband Irey had been cheating on his wife with prostitutes for the past 15 years, which was three-fifths of the 25 years they had been married. See Pugh, 515 F.3d at 1192-93 (considering beyond the sentence findings these additional salient facts that were elicited, and uncontroverted, at the sentencing hearings); see also Gall, 552 U.S. at 51, 128 S.Ct. at 597 (the appellate court will, of course, take into account the totality of the circumstances). He did it on a weekly basis while he was in Orlando, his hometown. Because of Irey's immoral conduct, he contracted a venereal disease and passed it on to his wife. He lied to his wife. As a result of Irey's depraved criminal misconduct his family lost their expensive house, their savings, and their second-generation family business. Irey admitted that because he had spent so much time over the years pursuing sex outside marriage, he spent less time with his children than he should have: I was cheating my children out of things like taking them to the parks or a basketball game, because I had to go pick up a prostitute. In view of those uncontroverted facts, no significant weight can be given to Irey's having been a good husband and father for his wife and children. Irey lied not just to his wife but to others as well. As he put it, I would lie to people even when I did not need to. He stole from the family business, which his father had started a half century before. His criminal conduct put the long-established company out of business, costing fifty members of the community their jobs. No number of civic club memberships can outweigh the harm that Irey caused his wife and family and the community. It was, however, appropriate for the district court to find and consider that Irey obviously has a very loving family and deserves whatever credit he should take for having produced these people who spoke on his behalf at the sentence hearing. That is true even though the extremes Irey's family members went to in expressing their affection for and devotion to him seem detached from the reality of the circumstances in which they were called upon to do it. It is incongruous at best to describe the man who had sexually tortured so many little children as loving, a hero, a star, and as one who taught others so much about life and love, and who had a way of touching people's lives. Still, we are sympathetic, as the district court was, to the terrible emotional plight that Irey's family was in because of his crimes. It is admirable that they chose to stand by him, but in deciding how that weighs in the sentencing calculus their statements have to be considered in context. It may well be, as the government suggests, that some of the good things Irey's family members had to say about him are a testament to his ability to lead a double life and to evade detection even by those closest to him. Their praise of Irey may prove that he knew how to keep his family and friends in the dark about his terrible dark side, as he described it to the district court. [29] Still, it was not unreasonable for the district court to conclude that Irey has a very loving family and deserves whatever credit he should take for having produced these people. We would find grossly unreasonable, however, any suggestion that the credit Irey may be due for his family's feelings for him could even remotely approach the heavy weight stacked against him for the criminal acts he committed.