Opinion ID: 155147
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Review on Appeal

Text: What then is the role of an appellate court in reviewing a district court’s decision to depart from the Guidelines? The Tenth Circuit approach established prior to Koon in United States v. White, 893 F.2d 276 (10th Cir. 1990), is framed somewhat differently than the approach announced in Koon. White requires an appellate court to engage in a three-step review of upward departures: (1) de novo review of whether the circumstances cited by the district court encompass a factor not adequately taken into consideration by the Sentencing Commission in formulating the Guidelines; (2) clearly erroneous review of the factual determinations underlying the decision to depart; and (3) reasonableness review of the degree of departure. Id. at 277-78; see also United States v. MaldonadoCampos, 920 F.2d 714, 719-20 (10th Cir. 1990) (same three-step approach applies to downward departures). -9- After Koon, appellate courts must now review departures under a unitary abuse-of-discretion standard which “includes review to determine that the discretion [of the district court] was not guided by erroneous legal conclusions.” Koon, 116 S. Ct. at 2047-48. Koon made explicit that in promulgating the Guidelines, Congress did not intend “to vest in appellate courts wide-ranging authority over district court sentencing decisions.” Id. at 2046. Rather, Congress meant to “establish[] limited appellate review” where “district courts retain much of their traditional sentencing discretion.” Id. In determining what aspects of the sentencing decision should be left largely to the discretion of the district court, the Supreme Court made this seminal statement: “The deference that is due depends on the nature of the question presented.” Id. When the question presented is essentially factual, appellate review should be at its most deferential. The Court stated that in most cases departure decisions will fall into this category. The Court explained that “[a] district court’s decision to depart from the guidelines . . . will in most cases be due substantial deference, for it embodies the traditional exercise of discretion by a sentencing court.” Id. at 2046; see also Rivera, 994 F.2d at 951 (“In many . . . instances, the district court’s [departure decision] . . . will not involve a ‘quintessentially legal’ interpretation of the words of a guideline, but rather will amount to a judgment about whether the given circumstances, as seen from the - 10 - district court’s unique vantage point, are usual or unusual, ordinary or not ordinary, and to what extent.”). When the issue is essentially legal, however, appellate review should be plenary. For example, the Court stated that “whether a factor is a permissible basis for departure under any circumstances is a question of law, and the court of appeals need not defer to the district court’s resolution of the point.” Koon, 116 S. Ct. at 2047. 4 In sum, after Koon, appellate review of departures is guided by the nature of the question presented. One component of the decision to depart is essentially legal: whether the factual circumstances supporting departure are permissible departure factors. See Rivera, 994 F.2d at 951. Impermissible factors include forbidden factors, discouraged factors that are not present to some exceptional degree, and encouraged factors already taken into account by the applicable guideline that are not present to some exceptional degree. A second component is 4 Although a district court’s decision to depart usually involves an essentially factual inquiry, in some cases the determination that a defendant falls outside an applicable guideline heartland will not be based primarily on the court’s judgment about the facts of the case, but will involve the court’s determination as to what constitutes a guideline’s heartland. In this situation appellate review would not be deferential because the question of what constitutes a guideline’s heartland is essentially legal in nature. See Rivera, 994 F.2d at 951 (discussing, for example, the “quintessentially legal” question of what constitutes the heartland of the child pornography guideline). - 11 - essentially factual: whether the factual circumstances from the vantage point of the district court make this the atypical case. See id. at 951-52. Thus, in determining whether the district court abused its discretion in departing from the Guidelines, appellate courts after Koon must evaluate: (1) whether the factual circumstances supporting a departure are permissible departure factors; (2) whether the departure factors relied upon by the district court remove the defendant from the applicable Guideline heartland thus warranting a departure, (3) whether the record sufficiently supports the factual basis underlying the departure, and (4) whether the degree of departure is reasonable. In performing this review, Koon tells us that an appellate court need not defer to the district court’s resolution of the first question, whether a factor is a permissible departure factor under any circumstances, but must give “substantial deference” to the district court’s resolution of the second question, whether “a particular [defendant] is within the heartland given all the facts of the case.” Id. 5 Because Koon did not address the second and third steps of our prior multi-step approach—record support for the factual circumstances underlying the departure and reasonable review of the degree of departure—they remain as before. We 5 If an appellate court determines that a district court based a departure on both valid and invalid factors, the court should remand the case unless it determines the district court “would have imposed the same sentence absent reliance on the invalid factors.” Koon, 116 S. Ct. at 2053-54 (citing United States v. Williams, 503 U.S. 193, 203 (1992)). - 12 - emphasize, however, that all four steps of the departure review are subject to a unitary abuse of discretion standard. B. Career Offender Category Departures under § 4A1.3 1. The Decision to Depart As discussed above, a district court is authorized to depart from the Guidelines only if the court finds a mitigating or aggravating factor not adequately taken into account by the Commission. See U.S.S.G. § 5K2.0; 18 U.S.C. § 3553(b). One such circumstance appears in U.S.S.G. § 4A1.3. See Maldonado-Campos, 920 F.2d at 719, n.2 (holding that departures under section 4A1.3 are a subset of departures under section 5K2.0). Section 4A1.3 permits a departure when “reliable information indicates that the criminal history category 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, p.s. In deciding whether to depart under section 4A1.3, the district court must specifically address the adequacy of a defendant’s criminal history category as it reflects both the defendant’s past criminal conduct and likely criminal future. The purpose of section 4A1.3 is to allow a district court to deviate from the otherwise applicable guideline range where a defendant’s criminal history, - 13 - likelihood of recidivism, or both differ significantly from the typical offender for whom the applicable criminal history category was formulated. In other words, a district court may depart when a defendant’s criminal past or likely criminal future removes the defendant from the heartland of the applicable criminal history category. This “heartland” analysis extends to defendants sentenced as career offenders. The automatic placement of a career offender in criminal history category VI under U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1 reflects the Commission’s assessment that the offender possesses the most serious criminal history and the highest possible likelihood of recidivism. Thus, for a defendant who technically qualifies as a career offender but whose criminal history and likelihood of recidivism significantly differ from the heartland of career offenders, the sentencing court may consider a departure from the career offender category. United States v. Bowser, 941 F.2d 1019, 1025 (10th Cir. 1991); see also United States v. Lindia, 82 F.3d 1154, 1165 (1st Cir. 1996); United States v. Spencer, 25 F.3d 1105, 1113 (D.C. Cir. 1994); United States v. Rogers, 972 F.2d 489, 493-94 (2d Cir. 1992); United States v. Lawrence, 916 F.2d 553, 554-55 (9th Cir. 1990); United States v. Brown, 903 F.2d 540, 545 (8th Cir. 1990). In departing downward under section 4A1.3 from the career offender guideline, the district court must justify its finding that a defendant’s career - 14 - offender status significantly overstates the seriousness of the defendant’s criminal history or likelihood for recidivism. As with all departure decisions, the district court should consider all of the factual circumstances that bear upon a defendant’s criminal history and likelihood for recidivism, but the district court may not rely on any impermissible departure factors. For each potential departure factor, the court must ask whether it is a permissible factor. After the district court has determined which factors are permissible departure factors, the court then must determine whether these factors, alone or in combination, cause the defendant’s career offender status to over-represent the seriousness of his criminal history or likelihood for recidivism. Only then may the district court depart under section 4A1.3 from the otherwise applicable guideline range for a career offender. 2. Review on Appeal In reviewing a departure under section 4A1.3, an appellate court must first address whether the district court has relied on a permissible departure factor. The Sentencing Guidelines explicitly encourage a departure when the district court concludes that a defendant’s criminal history category over-represents the seriousness of the defendant’s criminal history or likelihood of recidivism. The Commission’s commentary to section 4A1.3 makes clear that “the criminal history score is unlikely to take into account all the variations in the seriousness of - 15 - criminal history that may occur.” U.S.S.G. § 4A1.3, comment. (backg’d.). Because section 4A1.3 provides an encouraged basis for departure not already taken into account by the Commission, over-representation of a defendant’s criminal history or likelihood for recidivism always will be an approved ground for departure. That does not end the inquiry into whether the district court has relied on any impermissible departure factors, however, because the district court must identify the factual bases supporting its finding of over-representation. These supporting facts themselves must constitute permissible grounds for departure. Bowser, 940 F.2d at 1023-25. For example, a district court may not conclude that a defendant is less likely to commit further crimes because of her particular socioeconomic status, a forbidden factor under the Guidelines. Therefore, an appellate court must address whether the factual circumstances identified by the district court in support of its finding of over-representation are permissible departure factors. If any are impermissible, they may not be used. Once the appellate court has determined that the district court has relied upon permissible departure factors, the court should proceed to the second inquiry: whether the factual circumstances identified by the district court remove the defendant from the career offender heartland. Despite the “technically legal nature of [this] question,” Rivera, 994 F.2d at 951, appellate courts should not - 16 - “ignore the district court’s special competence . . . about the ‘ordinariness’ or ‘unusualness’ of a particular case.” Koon, 116 S. Ct. at 2047 (quoting Rivera, 994 F.2d at 951). Thus, the district court’s resolution of the second inquiry should not be disturbed unless the court abused its discretion—that is, unless it “made a clear error of judgment or exceeded the bounds of permissible choice in the circumstances.” Boughton v. Cotter Corp., 65 F.3d 823, 832 (10th Cir. 1995) (quoting McEwen v. City of Norman, 926 F.2d 1539, 1553 (10th Cir. 1991)). Finally, appellate courts should ensure that the record adequately supports the factual basis for the departure and that the degree of departure is reasonable. See White, 893 F.2d at 277-78