Opinion ID: 173129
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Departure Analysis.

Text: We read Mr. Osborne's appellate brief as challenging the district court's application of the second prong of the four-part departure inquiry: whether the factors relied upon by the district court remove him from the applicable guideline heartland and thus warrant a departure. When analyzing this prong, the district court commingles factual and legal questions. Munoz-Tello, 531 F.3d at 1189. The determination of the heartland is a legal matter to the extent that it relies on interpretation of Guidelines language but a factual matter to the extent that it relies on experience with the type of offense involved to decide whether the facts of the case at hand are usual or unusual, ordinary or not ordinary, and to what extent. United States v. Jose-Gonzalez, 291 F.3d 697, 704 (10th Cir.2002) (internal quotation marks omitted). Here, the district court's justifications for the upward departure encompass both legal and factual matters. The court's first rationalethat a high speed car chase does, in fact, always endanger more than one person and therefore should automatically qualify for consideration of an upward departure under Application Note 6  constitutes a legal definition of the scope of the heartland that we examine de novo. Rec. vol. II, at 39; see United States v. Sicken, 223 F.3d 1169, 1173 (10th Cir.2000) ([W]here a district court's decision to depart involves its determination as to what constitutes a guideline's heartland, appellate review would not be deferential because the question of what constitutes a guideline's heartland is essentially legal in nature.) (citing United States v. Rivera, 994 F.2d 942, 951 (1st Cir.1993) (Breyer, C.J.) (Plenary review is also appropriate where the appellate court, in deciding whether the allegedly special circumstances are of a kind that permits departure, will have to perform the quintessentially legal function of interpreting a set of words, those of an individual guideline, in light of their intention or purpose, in order to identify the nature of the guideline's heartland. ...) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted)). In contrast, the court's finding that the circumstances of Mr. Osborne's high-speed car chase were exceptional, and therefore outside of the heartland of ordinary flights from law enforcement, constitutes a factual determination to which we owe substantial deference. See Jose-Gonzalez, 291 F.3d at 703-04 (Whether a given factor is present to a degree not adequately considered by the Commission ... [is a] matter[] determined in large part by comparison with the facts of other Guidelines cases. District courts have an institutional advantage over appellate courts in making these sorts of determinations, especially as they see so many more Guidelines cases than appellate courts do.) (citing Koon v. United States, 518 U.S. 81, 98, 116 S.Ct. 2035, 135 L.Ed.2d 392 (1996)). We are unpersuaded by the district court's first rationale. The district court would deem as categorically outside of the heartland of flights from law enforcement high-speed car chases under the view that all such chases endanger more than one person. We cannot conclude as a legal matter, however, that this is so. [1] Furthermore, we do not believe that such a categorical exclusion would have been within the contemplation of the Sentencing Commission in drafting application note 6 to § 3C1.2. The departures envisioned by that note are subject to the limiting principles articulated by the Commission in Chapter Five of the guidelines. See U.S.S.G. § 3C1.2 n. 6 (offering Chapter Five, Part K (Departures) as authority for the envisioned departures). In that chapter, the Commission expressed its expectation that departures based upon the conclusion that aggravating circumstances are present to a degree not adequately taken into consideration by the guidelines will occur rarely and only in exceptional cases. U.S.S.G. § 5K2.0, n. 3(B)(i). However, in substance, the district court determined here that the aggravating circumstances associated with all high-speed car chases were not adequately taken into account by the Commission in drafting the guidelines and, therefore, such chases automatically warranted upward departures. Far from ensuring that such aggravating-circumstance departures will occur rarely and only in exceptional cases, the likely effect of the district court's categorical rule would be to make the majority of actual flights from law enforcement involving a car eligible for upward departures. The Commission could not have contemplated such a result. See Koon, 518 U.S. at 93, 116 S.Ct. 2035 (describing the heartland as a set of typical cases embodying the conduct that each guideline describes). Consequently, we conclude that the district court's categorical rule constituting its first departure rationale is legal error. But that does not end our analysis. The district court offered a second alternative rationale to justify its upward departure that was predicated on the specific facts of Mr. Osborne's flight from law enforcement. Acknowledging the district court's special ability to judge the ordinariness or unusualness of a particular case, id. at 99, 116 S.Ct. 2035 (internal quotation marks omitted), we hold that the district court did not abuse its discretion in finding that the specific facts of Mr. Osborne's flight were outside of the heartland of typical flights from law enforcement. The district court held that Mr. Osborne's repeated high speed passes through and past the Wal-Mart Store parking lot, the gas station and the McDonald's put a huge number of people at risk that would not have been  that ordinarily would not be affected in fleeing from law enforcement officers. It's to a degree not adequately considered by the Sentencing Commission in 3(c)1.2. Rec. vol. II, at 41. These factual findings warranted an upward departure under U.S.S.G. § 3C1.2 n. 6 (a substantial risk of death or bodily injury to more than one person) and U.S.S.G. § 5K2.0(a)(3) ([A] circumstance is present ... to a degree substantially in excess of ... that which ordinarily is involved in that kind of offense.).