Opinion ID: 4394859
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Pre-Hearing Memoranda

Text: Prior to the restitution hearing, both parties submitted lengthy memoranda addressing (1) how the restitution determination should be made, and (2) what the award should be for each victim. The government and Rothenberg agreed that the Supreme Court’s decision in Paroline v. United States, 572 U.S. 434, 134 S. Ct. 1710 (2014), governed how the restitution awards should be made, established a proximate cause requirement, and set forth a variety of factors for district courts to consider in determining the proper amount of restitution. Under Paroline’s proximate causation requirement, a defendant should pay restitution “in an amount that comports with the defendant’s relative role in the causal process that underlies the victim’s general losses.” Paroline, 572 U.S. at 458, 134 S. Ct. at 1727. But the parties disagreed about how exactly to apply the Paroline factors and how to calculate and determine that amount. The government recognized that, under Paroline, the district court must impose restitution in an amount that reflects the particular defendant’s relative role in the continuing traffic in the child pornography images of the victim. The government proposed that the district court make that calculation by using a variation of what is known as the “1/n method,” whereby the court would divide the total amount of each victim’s losses by the number of defendants, across multiple prosecutions, who had been ordered to pay restitution to the victim. The government submitted that this method would 5 Case: 17-12349 Date Filed: 05/08/2019 Page: 6 of 67 provide the district court a starting point from which to exercise its discretion in determining the appropriate amount of restitution vis-à-vis Rothenberg, as only a possessor of images of child pornography. Rothenberg argued, by contrast, that the starting point should be “apportionment between the original abuser of the child, versus the distributor, and later, possessor of the pornography,” which Rothenberg referred to as “disaggregation.” Rothenberg asserted that this disaggregation requires two steps: first, the district court must separate the harm caused by the original abuser from that caused by later distributors and possessors; and second, the district court must separate the harm caused by the defendant from that caused by other distributors or possessors. Below, we detail for each victim (1) the victim’s restitution request and supporting evidence, (2) the government’s position, and then (3) Rothenberg’s position.