Opinion ID: 1238399
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Relocation to Arizona

Text: During the one-month extension period that the district court granted in response to the first physician's report, Arhebamen moved to Arizona in direct defiance of his pretrial-services officer's orders. In response to this act, the court imposed an additional departure pursuant to § 5K2.0 in connection with the conviction for failure to appear at sentencing. The district court decided that a two-level upward departure was appropriate for Arhebamen's move to Arizona by employing an analogy to § 2F1.1(b)(6)(A) (2 level Specific Offense Characteristic where Defendant `relocated or participated in relocating, a fraudulent scheme in order to avoid law enforcement or regulatory officials'). As set forth above, § 5K2.0 departures are appropriate where the case involves characteristics of a kind, or to a degree, not adequately taken into consideration by the Sentencing Commission. The government argues that this departure was appropriate because the relocationin direct contravention of the orders of his pretrial services officerwas a serious aggravating circumstance that demonstrated total disregard for the authority of the district court and ma[d]e [this] case much different from the average failure to appear case. Arhebamen counters that because the jurisdiction of the U.S. Marshall is nationwide, he was at all times within the grasp of the authorities to return him to custody, and [t]he fact that he did not stay in the Eastern District of Michigan can hardly be characterized as unusual or extraordinary so as to impose an additional 2 levels of departure. We do not find the district court's analogy to U.S.S.G. § 2F1.1(b)(6)(A) persuasive here. Nothing in the record reflects that Arhebamen relocated in order to avoid law enforcement or regulatory officials or the authority of the court. See id. To the contrary, Arhebamen's wife provided a forwarding address to the pretrial-services officer and, as a result, Arhebamen was promptly arrested after he failed to appear. In light of these facts, Arhebamen's move to Arizona did not take his failure to appear for sentencing out of the heartland of similar cases, or burden the government in any unusual way. We are also unaware of any case that endorses the use of § 5K2.0 under analogous circumstances. In sum, we conclude that the district court committed a procedural error in imposing this two-level upward departure.