Opinion ID: 2995740
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Evidence of Roach’s Mental Capacity

Text: In concluding that the departure was warranted, the district court found, “[i]n the words of Guidelines § 5K2.13 and its application notes,” that “Roach committed the offense while suffering from a significantly reduced mental capacity, in that she had a significantly impaired ability to control behavior that she knew was wrongful.” It is not entirely clear from the court’s opinion whether this finding includes Roach’s ability to control her conduct at the time of her offense—that is, her submission of fraudulent expense reports. If it does not, the departure was, as we just explained, an incorrect application of § 5K2.13. But to the extent the judge’s conclusion can be read to include a finding that Roach had a significantly impaired capacity to control her conduct at the time of the offense, it is unsupported by the evidence and clearly erroneous. 4 Sadolsky implies that a departure may be warranted if, because of financial circumstances, the offense was necessary in order to satisfy the compulsion. See 234 F.3d at 943 (noting that the defendant had “maxed out” his credit line before resorting to fraud). Roach does not make any such argument, so we need not address this question, or address the government’s argument that a departure under those circumstances would be barred by U.S.S.G. § 5K2.12, which states that “personal financial difficulties and economic pressure upon a trade or business do not warrant a decrease in sentence.” 12 No. 01-2618 The district court had before it statements from doctors who examined Roach, as well as evidence about Roach’s history relating to her compulsive shopping binges and the activities surrounding those binges. The district court found that Roach was “not able fully to control the things she did in order to allow her to continue to carry out [her shopping] compulsion,” pointing to evidence that she had consistently engaged in activities to “facilitate and conceal” her shopping, such as paying for groceries with checks written for amounts above the purchase amount, obtaining new credit cards, having bills sent to friends’ houses, and borrowing money from relatives to pay her credit card debt. While this evidence might perhaps indicate a lack of control with respect to those (lawful) activities, it does not shed light on her mental capacity at the time she engaged in the fraudulent conduct. The doctors’ statements are similarly inadequate to support a finding that Roach had a significantly impaired ability to control her conduct at the time of her offense. Dr. Jeffrey Roth, a psychiatrist who treated Roach, did not offer an opinion on that subject, but stated that “it is a consistent diagnostic criterion that these individuals [who suffer from compulsive shopping disorders] can desperately commit illegal acts such as forgery or theft to finance their illness and hide their debt from family and others.” Notably missing from Dr. Roth’s statement is any conclusion that this aspect of the disorder even applies to Roach or, if it did, any assessment of the role it played at the time of her offense. Cf. Greenfield, 244 F.3d at 163 (expert’s testimony that “if a depression is severe enough, . . . it could significantly reduce someone’s mental capacity” could not support a departure under § 5K2.13). Unlike Dr. Roth, Dr. Robert Galatzer-Levy, who evaluated Roach at the request of the defense, did conclude that Roach had a significantly reduced mental capacity both during her shopping binges and when she submitted the false expense reports: No. 01-2618 13 During both the compulsive shopping and the commission of the charged offense Mrs. Roach appears to have been functioning in a dissociated state in which information about the legal, practical and moral consequences of her actions was not effectively available to her. This constitutes a significant reduction in her mental capacity at the time of commission of the charged offense. With respect to his conclusion about Roach’s mental state while shopping, Dr. Galatzer-Levy explained his reasoning, which the district court summarized as follows: [C]ompulsive shopping is one of several ways that persons suffering from severe depression attempt to relieve the effects of their depression. Other such “self-medicating” activity of this type can include alcohol consumption, compulsive eating, gambling, or sexual activity. Some researchers believe that this type of behavior temporarily increases the person’s available level of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that, among other things, determines the extent and severity of depression, and thus provides temporary relief from the person’s symptoms. During this activity, the person is in a dissociative state in which information that ordinarily would influence the person’s behavior does not do so. In short, the types of concerns that would prevent most peo- ple from engaging in such activity, such as recognition of the financial implications, disapproval of family members, or simple common sense, are sim- ply not at work.5 By contrast, Dr. Galatzer-Levy offers no explanation of the reasoning behind his conclusion that Roach had a 5 Dr. Arnold Goldberg offered a similar opinion about Roach’s mental state during her shopping binges. 14 No. 01-2618 significantly impaired ability to control her behavior at the time of her offense. His statement fails to reconcile its apparent inconsistency with Roach’s own statements that she began the fraud after inadvertently discovering that she could be paid by her employer for expenses relating to conferences she had cancelled. According to Roach, she kept the money after realizing that it was a way to pay off her debt and conceal it from her husband. Given these statements, the episodic nature of her impairment, and the fact that Roach had “self-medicated” her depression and compulsively shopped for more than ten years without any criminal activity, the analytic leap from a shopping compulsion to a significantly impaired ability to control fraudulent conduct spanning three years is too great to make without supporting reasons or evidence. Dr. GalatzerLevy’s naked conclusion about Roach’s mental state at the time of the offense is therefore entitled to little, if any, weight. See Mid-State Fertilizer Co. v. Exch. Nat’l Bank, 877 F.2d 1333, 1339 (7th Cir. 1989) (“An expert who supplies nothing but a bottom line supplies nothing of value to the judicial process.”). Dr. Paul Pasulka’s report, prepared at the request of the government, is similarly unhelpful. Dr. Pasulka concludes that Roach was not fully able to control unspecified wrongful behavior, but does not say that her impairment was significant. Like Dr. Galatzer-Levy, Pasulka supplies little in the way of evidence or reasoning supporting his conclusion, and his only observation about Roach’s offense conduct—that she defrauded her employer in an attempt to hide her behaviors—tends to undermine, rather than support, a finding that Roach had a significantly impaired capacity to control her conduct at the time of the offense. No. 01-2618 15