Opinion ID: 218749
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The District Court's Encouragement to Stipulate

Text: Nor were any of the defendants railroaded. Van Mersbergen contends that he was, arguing that he was deprived of due process because the district court threatened to punish the defendants at sentencing if they refused to agree to reasonable stipulations in order to expedite the trial proceedings. [20] Van Mersbergen focuses on this comment by the district court: The Court: Well, the failure to agree to reasonable and usual stipulations is not technically an obstruction of justice but it's certainly a factor that I can consider in future proceedings, if there are any in this case. Who wouldn't agree to the stipulations? Ms. Nelan: I believe it was Mr. Farmer.... Farmer agreed to some stipulations but not to others. He stipulated to the authenticity of several checks and to the testimony of several borrowers; he declined to stipulate to the testimony of officials from the defrauded lenders. We have stated that [f]ederal law places no limitation on the information which a court can consider in determining an appropriate sentence. United States v. Rodriguez, 765 F.2d 1546, 1554-55 (11th Cir.1985) (citing 18 U.S.C. § 3661 (originally enacted as 18 U.S.C. § 3577)). To the same effect is 18 U.S.C. § 3661, which provides: No limitation shall be placed on the information concerning the background, character, and conduct of a person convicted of an offense which a court of the United States may receive and consider for the purpose of imposing an appropriate sentence. 18 U.S.C. § 3661. We have recognized, however, that in spite of § 3661's broad language, a sentencing court cannot consider against a defendant any constitutionally protected conduct. United States v. Rodriguez, 959 F.2d 193, 197 (11th Cir.1992) (quotation marks omitted); see also U.S.S.G. § 1B1.4 (In determining the sentence to impose within the guideline range, or whether a departure from the guidelines is warranted, the court may consider, without limitation, any information concerning the background, character and conduct of the defendant, unless otherwise prohibited by law. ) (emphasis added); United States v. Burgos, 276 F.3d 1284, 1291-92 (11th Cir.2001). If one considers a criminal defendant's failure to stipulate to be the exercise of a constitutional right, it would seem that increasing a defendant's sentence because of his failure to stipulate crosses the line. But some of the lines in this area are blurry. In United States v. Malekzadeh, 855 F.2d 1492 (11th Cir.1988), the defendant argued that she had been punished for exercising her constitutional right not to testify because the sentencing court gave her a longer sentence as a result of her refusal to testify against the man she considered her husband. Id. at 1498. Because it was a joint trial, id. at 1494, the defendant would have had to plead guilty in order to testify against the man who was her co-defendant. We did not dispute what she claimed had happened, but we rejected her argument on the ground that a court is absolutely entitled to consider a defendant's failure to cooperate. Id. We cited for that proposition Roberts v. United States, 445 U.S. 552, 100 S.Ct. 1358, 63 L.Ed.2d 622 (1980). In Roberts the Supreme Court held that a court could lengthen a defendant's term of imprisonment by imposing consecutive instead of concurrent sentences because he had refused to cooperate in the investigation of another crime in which he was a confessed participant. We interpreted the Roberts decision as being based on the sentencing court's need to reward those who had cooperated and to encourage those who might cooperate in the future. Malekzadeh, 855 F.2d at 1498. That those who fail to cooperate receive longer sentences than those who are equally culpable but do cooperate is an inevitable product of encouraging cooperation. That principle is written throughout our criminal law. For example, the Supreme Court has held that it is entirely permissible for prosecutors to threaten a defendant with a harsher charge carrying a much longer sentence in order to pressure him into pleading guilty, and then carry through with the threat when the defendant has the temerity to insist on his constitutional right to trial. Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U.S. 357, 98 S.Ct. 663, 54 L.Ed.2d 604 (1978). And the sentencing guidelines reward those who accept responsibility, the chief indicia of which is that they helped the prosecution get the case to the sentence stage more efficiently by pleading guilty. See U.S.S.G. § 3E1.1. A distinction might be drawn between the carrot and the stick, between rewarding a defendant for giving up rights to which he is entitled on one hand, and punishing him for refusing to give up those rights on the other. The argument against that distinction is that the result for the defendant is the same. If a defendant receives a sentence of 100 months because he went to trial while his equally culpable co-defendant gets 50 months because he cooperated by pleading guilty, is a stick being administered to the defendant or a carrot being given to the codefendant? Whatever may be said about the use of sticks, the law seems to be clear that he who receives a break has gotten a carrot, and there is nothing wrong with doling them out. And that is enough to decide this case. At trial, the district court sometimes expressed its sentiment regarding stipulations by indicating that cooperation would result in a lower sentence, and at other times by indicating that failure to cooperate would result in a higher one. At sentencing, however, there were only carrotscooperation was rewarded all around. The court specifically told Hill, Powers, Van Mersbergen, Thomas, and Farmer that each of them received lower sentences than they otherwise would have because each had agreed to reasonable and appropriate stipulations during the trial. Van Mersbergen insinuates that prejudice nevertheless resulted because the court did in fact punish Farmer for his refusal to enter into some of the stipulations, see supra at 848, as evidenced by the disparity between Farmer's sentence (127 months) and Brown's (5 months). [21] The record, however, reflects that the district court explicitly stated that it sentenced Farmer towards the low end of his guidelines range (121-151 months) because he had entered into reasonable stipulations that shortened the trial, which reduced the costs to the government in time and money. The court did not intimate that it was imposing a longer sentence because Farmer had not entered into some of the other stipulations. The government also points out that Farmer deserved a much longer sentence than Brown because he participated in far more transactions than she did. The court adequately explained its reasons for both sentences, and those reasons did not involve a difference in the number of stipulations the two defendants entered into. The reasons the court gave for Farmer's sentence (which was, as we have mentioned, near the bottom of the guidelines range) included the magnitude of the crime, the loss involved, and Farmer's lack of remorse. As for Brown, the court explained that it was sentencing her to only five months when the guidelines recommended a sentence between 63 and 78 months because of her extraordinary lack of profit and because the amount of loss grossly overstated her criminal conduct compared to that of the other defendants. Those are reasonable bases for the difference in sentences imposed on Farmer and Brown.