Opinion ID: 622756
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Imposition of a Consecutive Sentence

Text: We similarly identify no merit in Coppola's claim of procedural error under U.S.S.G. § 5G1.3 in the district court's direction that the sixteen-year sentence imposed for his racketeering crimes in this case run consecutively to, rather than concurrently with, the 42-month sentence that Coppola was then serving on the single count of conspiracy to harbor a fugitive imposed in United States v. Coppola, 07-cr-225 (DLI). Section 5G1.3 guides the imposition of sentences where a defendant is subject to an undischarged term of imprisonment with an eye toward having such punishments approximate the total penalty that would have been imposed had . . . all of the offenses been prosecuted in a single proceeding. Witte v. United States, 515 U.S. 389, 404-05, 115 S.Ct. 2199, 132 L.Ed.2d 351 (1995). Toward that end, § 5G1.3(b) provides for a concurrent sentence where the prior offense is relevant conduct to the instant offense and was the basis for an increase in the offense level for the instant offense. Coppola's harboring conviction may have been relevant conduct to Racketeering Act Three's fraudulent document offense, but the harboring offense did not increase the offense level for that predicate, which in any event had no impact on Coppola's total offense level for the crimes of conviction. That offense level was determined by the subpredicates of Racketeering Act One. Where § 5G1.3(b) does not apply, the Guidelines leave it entirely to the district court's discretion whether to impose sentence concurrently, partially concurrently, or consecutively to the prior undischarged term of imprisonment to achieve a reasonable punishment for the instant offense, U.S.S.G. § 5G1.3(c), consistent with the factors outlined in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), see U.S.S.G. § 5G1.3 cmt. n. 3(A)(i). [30] Coppola complains that, even if the district court could have imposed a consecutive sentence, it committed procedural error by failing adequately to explain its reasons for doing so. Our precedent does not support this argument. Even when we understood the Guidelines to be mandatory, we had ruled that nothing in the language of [§ 5G1.3(c)] or its Commentary requires district courts to make specific findings with respect to any or all of the factors listed in the Commentary or § 3553(a). United States v. Brennan, 395 F.3d 59, 69 (2d Cir.2005) (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted). More recently, we have ruled with respect to sentencing generally that, [i]n the absence of record evidence suggesting otherwise, we presume that the district court has faithfully discharged its duty to consider the § 3553(a) factors. United States v. Payne, 591 F.3d at 71 (internal quotation marks omitted). Nothing in the record suggests that the district court failed to consider the § 3553(a) factors here, either in its identification of a sixteen-year prison term for the racketeering crimes at issue or in its decision to run that sentence consecutively to the undischarged sentence for harboring. Rather, such consideration is evident in the district court's explanation for imposing a non-Guidelines sentence, an explanation that discussed the seriousness of the criminal conduct, the need for general and specific deterrence, favorable mitigating factors, and inadequacies in the racketeering Guidelines. See 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). The district court made clear that it selected a sixteen-year sentence as opposed to a still higher termprecisely because Coppola would also serve 42 months for harboring conduct related to Racketeering Act Three. In sum, the record indicates that the district court committed no procedural error in imposing its sentence consecutively in order to approximate the total non-Guidelines sentence that it would have imposed had all the offenses been prosecuted in a single proceeding. See Witte v. United States, 515 U.S. at 404-05, 115 S.Ct. 2199.