Opinion ID: 194688
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Stating Reasons.

Text: It is true that a sentencing court must provide a statement of the reasons undergirding a departure from the GSR. See 18 U.S.C. 3553(c) (1988). Here, however, the lower court honored the statutory imperative, furnishing three specific reasons for the departure. It found that (1) there was a great likelihood of recidivism,7 (2) appellant's record included several offenses for which he had received no criminal history points, yet, even so, his criminal history score far outstripped what was necessary to place him in CHC VI, and (3) appellant's record also revealed sentences of substantially more than one year imposed as a result of independent crimes committed on different occasions. Once the court gave so precise a statement 7Appellant's offhand suggestion that the district court lacked a factual basis for this conclusion is jejune. The court supportably found that appellant began planning the offense of conviction while still in prison and embarked upon it almost immediately upon release. The court could reasonably have believed that so brief an interval between being a prisoner and implementing a sophisticated crime was a fair indication, under all the circumstances, that recidivism was a highly likely eventuality. We discern no clear error in this finding. 12 of reasons, the statute was satisfied.8 We do not think that a district court must dissect its departure decision, explaining in mathematical or pseudo-mathematical terms each microscopic choice made in arriving at the precise sentence. See United States v. Aymelek, 926 F.2d 64, 70 (1st Cir. 1991); Ocasio, 914 F.2d at 336. To impose such a requirement under the guise of procedural reasonableness would simply add a layer of unnecessary formality to the departure equation.9 We flatly reject so auxetic a notion, preferring to regard reasonableness as a concept, not a constant. Ocasio, 914 F.2d at 336. Let us be perfectly clear. Under the guidelines, 8We note in passing that each of the three circumstances identified by the court below comprises a permissible basis for an upward departure. To illustrate, a sentencing court may consider departing when the CHC does not adequately reflect the seriousness of the defendant's past criminal conduct or the likelihood that the defendant will commit other crimes. U.S.S.G. 4A1.3. Among the items of reliable information that may indicate the presence of such a situation are the existence of prior sentence(s) not used in computing the criminal history category and prior sentence(s) of substantially more than one year imposed as a result of independent crimes committed on different occasions. U.S.S.G. 4A1.3(a), (b). 9Of course, we speak in terms of unguided departures. Section 4A1.3, as it stood at the time appellant was sentenced, offered no guidance as to the extent of an upward departure based on the criminal history of a defendant in CHC VI. See Aymelek, 926 F.2d at 70; Ocasio, 914 F.2d at 336 n.4. The operative guideline has since been amended to indicate that, when a sentencing court seeks to depart upward from CHC VI, it should structure the departure by moving incrementally down the sentencing table to the next higher offense level in Criminal History Category VI until it finds a guideline range appropriate to the case. U.S.S.G. 4A1.3 (Nov. 1992); U.S.S.G. App. C at amend. 460. However, appellant does not suggest that the district court should have followed this particular methodology in applying the pre-amendment version of section 4A1.3. Hence, we do not consider the question. 13 upward departures carry with them a certain burden to explicate the decisionmaking process. See Aymelek, 926 F.2d at 70 (observing that a sentencing court must clearly articulate reasons for the scope of the departure). But when the court has provided a reasoned justification for its decision to depart, and that statement constitutes an adequate summary from which an appellate tribunal can gauge the reasonableness of the departure's extent, it has no obligation to go further and attempt to quantify the impact of each incremental factor on the departure sentence. See id. (ruling that, in reference to unguided departures, a sentencing court need not resort at all to analogies); Diaz-Villafane, 874 F.2d at 51-52 (questioning the wisdom of allowing unguided departure decisions to become mere matter[s] of arithmetic or products of mechanistic beancounting).10 Here, the sentencing court's articulated grounds for departing permit us adequately to assess the reasonableness of the departure sentence. No more is exigible. See Williams v. United States, 112 S. Ct. 1112, 1121 (1992) (stating that in gauging the reasonableness of a departure, a 10While this circuit has explicitly refused to subject the concept of reasonableness to formulaic constraints, some other circuits have mandated a more mechanical approach to unguided departures. See, e.g., United States v. Thomas, 930 F.2d 526, 531 (7th Cir.) (The sentencing judge is . . . required to articulate the specific factors justifying the extent of his departure and to adjust the defendant's sentence by utilizing an incremental process that quantifies the impact of the factors considered by the court on defendant's sentence.), cert. denied, 112 S. Ct. 171 (1991); United States v. Lira-Barraza, 941 F.2d 745, 748-50 (9th Cir. 1991) (en banc) (similar). With due respect for this difference of opinion, we adhere to our circuit precedent. 14 reviewing tribunal must look[] to the amount and extent of the departure in light of the grounds for departing and to the purposes of sentencing).