Opinion ID: 151874
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: What It Comes Down To

Text: The district court suggested that these factors weighed in Irey's favor: he was 50 years old; his family still loved him; when he was not consorting with prostitutes in this country or raping, sodomizing, and torturing little girls in Cambodia, he was not such a bad guy; the illness of pedophilia rendered his criminal acts not purely volitional; and he was a victim of child pornography on the internet. The court discounted the value of general deterrence for sexual crimes against children. It thought that Irey would present a low risk of recidivism once released and, as a result, no time above the statutory minimum was needed to protect society from him. The result the court reached created an unwarranted sentence disparity among defendants who have committed comparable or less egregious offenses involving the sexual abuse of children. Along the way to its final sentencing decision the district court, as we have explained, committed a number of subsidiary errors in judgment, but even if we disregard all of them there remains one overriding clear error in judgment that renders the downward variance sentence substantively unreasonable. After discussing the other factors, the district court said: It comes down to my view of what promotes respect for the law and provides just punishment. The district court was right about the importance of the § 3553(a)(2)(A) factor, which requires consideration of the need for the sentence imposed to reflect the seriousness of the offense, to promote respect for the law, and to provide just punishment for the offense. But the court was wrong, it committed a clear error in judgment, in deciding that those purposes could be served by a major downward variance to a point closer to the statutory minimum sentence than it is to the guidelines range. The district court's leap from the advisory guidelines sentence of 30 years down to a just-above-minimum sentence of 17½ years does not reflect the seriousness of and provide just punishment for Irey's rape, sodomy, and sexual torture of at least fifty children, acts that he committed many many times over a four- or five- year period, and his production and distribution of one of the worst series of child pornography on the internet. Nor does it promote respect for the law. For all of the reasons we have explained, no downward variance from the guidelines range is reasonable in this case. Nothing less than the advisory guidelines sentence of 30 years, which is the maximum available, will serve the sentencing purposes set out in § 3553(a). We are left with the definite and firm conviction that it was substantively unreasonable, a clear error in judgment, an abuse of discretion, for the district court to conclude to the contrary. Were we to hold otherwise, we would come perilously close to holding that appellate review is limited to procedural irregularity, and that the Supreme Court has eviscerated appellate review at the same time that it has mandated the appellate courts to continue to review sentences for reasonableness. Pugh, 515 F.3d at 1203-04. That paradoxical holding would throw us back a quarter of a century into the pre-Sentencing Reform Act era, with its non-system in which every judge is a law unto himself or herself, Frankel, Jail Sentence Reform, at E21, an era that is gone for good. In reaching this conclusion, we are not, as Judge Tjoflat asserts, usurping the district court's sentencing role. [43] Separate Op. of Tjoflat, J., at 1258-60. Instead, we are performing our sentence review role. Again, the Supreme Court has instructed us that district judges at times make mistakes that are substantive and impose sentences that are unreasonable, and we exist to correct such mistakes when they occur. Rita, 551 U.S. at 354, 127 S.Ct. at 2466-67. In the course of reviewing this sentence, we have determined that, given the extreme facts in the case, a downward deviation from the guidelines range is not substantively reasonable. We have made that decision after studying the record of the sentence proceedings, which is complete; considering the district court's findings and explanation, which are adequate for the purpose; granting the district court's decision the full measure of deference that it is due; and considering all of the arguments of the parties for and against the reasonableness of the sentence. That is what appellate courts are supposed to do. [44] This is one of those unusual cases where the top and bottom of the guidelines range are the same; both are 30 years. There can be no upward variance because the statutory maximum is also 30 years. As a result, our holding that no downward variance is reasonable under the totality of the facts and circumstances of this case means that on remand the sentence must be 30 years. [45] There is no other sentence left. When we vacate a district court's judgment and remand, we routinely include in the bottom line of our decision that we are sending the case back for proceedings consistent with this opinion. Because we have determined that a downward deviation from the guidelines range in this case is unreasonable, it follows that the only action on remand that will be consistent with this opinion is resentencing within the guidelines range, which necessarily means a sentence of 30 years. [46]