Opinion ID: 3153967
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Messina’s Sentencing Challenge

Text: We review a district court’s sentence for reasonableness, see Kimbrough v. United States, 552 U.S. at 90–91, “a particularly deferential form of abuse‐of‐ discretion review” that applies to both the terms of a sentence (substantive reasonableness) and the procedures used to arrive at the sentence (procedural reasonableness), United States v. Cavera, 550 F.3d 180, 188−89 & n.5 (2d Cir. 2008) (en banc); accord United States v. Mazza‐Alaluf, 621 F.3d 205, 213 (2d Cir. 2010). Here, Messina argues that his 18‐year sentence—two years below his 20‐ 13 year Guidelines range—was both procedurally and substantively unreasonable. We are not persuaded.
Messina asserts that his sentence is procedurally unreasonable because it rests on errors of law and fact in the district court’s rejection of the government’s Rule 11(c)(1)(B) recommendation of a 10‐year sentence. See generally United States v. Johnson, 567 F.3d 40, 51−52 (2d Cir. 2009) (stating that court commits procedural error if it “rests its sentence on a clearly erroneous finding of fact” or commits “an error of law in the course of exercising discretion,” including error “in determining . . . the availability of departure authority” from Sentencing Guidelines (internal quotation marks and emphasis omitted)); United States v. Cavera, 550 F.3d at 190. Specifically, he argues that the district court misconstrued commentary to U.S.S.G. § 6B1.2(b)(2)(A) to preclude acceptance of the government’s recommendation and failed to recognize that there were good reasons to think that the government would not have been able to prove the alleged homicidal predicate acts beyond a reasonable doubt at trial. 14 In addressing these arguments, we begin with two observations. First, as the district court correctly recognized, and as Messina concedes, the government’s Rule 11(c)(1)(B) recommendation was not binding on the sentencing judge. While Messina suggests that it would wreak havoc with plea bargaining for courts not to accept 11(c)(1)(B) recommendations, the critical distinction between an 11(c)(1)(B) sentencing recommendation and an 11(c)(1)(C) sentencing agreement is that the latter is binding on a court that accepts the agreement, while the former is not. Messina clearly acknowledged at his plea allocution that the district court would not be bound by the government’s 11(c)(1)(B) recommendation. Thus, to the extent he grounds his reasonableness challenge in disappointed expectations, he fails to demonstrate any entitlement supporting a claim of procedural error. Second, as the district court also correctly acknowledged, it was not bound by the Sentencing Guidelines, including Guideline § 6B1.2(b)(2)(A) and its commentary. The court was required only to consider the Guidelines among the many sentencing factors listed in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). See United States v. Jones, 460 F.3d 191, 194 (2d Cir. 15 2006).5 It is against this background that we consider the district court’s reference to U.S.S.G. § 6B1.2(b) and its commentary in rejecting the government’s sentencing recommendation. The record convincingly shows that the district court’s reason for rejecting the government’s 10‐year sentencing recommendation was not any perceived limitation on its departure authority implied from § 6B1.2(b)(2)(A) commentary but, rather, the court’s own independent assessment of the sentence required by the totality of factors listed in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). As the court stated on November 8, 2013, it was the “very significant role played by Mr. Messina in many serious crimes . . . under the auspices of organized crime” that “call[ed] for a sentence significantly above the government’s recommended sentence of 120 months.” Tr., Nov. 8, 2013, at 9. The district court reiterated this reason on April 4, 2014, emphasizing the loss of human life resulting from Messina’s racketeering conspiracy. It explained that “a substantial sentence” of 18 years’ incarceration 5 Because § 6B1.2(b)(2) is a policy statement, it was not mandatory even before the Supreme Court’s Booker decision. See United States v. Anderson, 15 F.3d 278, 283−84 (2d Cir. 1994); accord United States v. Cohen, 99 F.3d 69, 70−71 (2d Cir. 1996). 16 was “necessary in light [of] Mr. Messina’s long and at times violent and deadly dedication to a life of crime with the Bonanno organized crime family. Mr. Messina did not just amass money for the Bonanno family, but his decisions led to the loss of human life, leaving behind devastated family and friends of the victims.” Tr., Apr. 4, 2014, at 55−56. The district court’s detailed discussion of facts supporting its assessment of the seriousness of Messina’s criminal conduct leaves us with no doubt that it would have rejected the recommended 10‐year sentence and imposed the challenged 18‐year term without regard to § 6B1.2(b)(2)(A) and its commentary. See generally United States v. Sanchez, 517 F.3d 651, 665 (2d Cir. 2008) (upholding sentence where record “indicate[s] clearly that the district court would have imposed the same sentence” even without alleged procedural error). Indeed, we understand the district court to have referenced § 6B1.2(b)(2)(A) and its commentary only to demonstrate that the Guidelines afforded no support for the urged 10‐year sentence. It observed that while § 6B1.2(b)(2) recognizes a district court’s discretion to accept a Rule 11(c)(1)(B) recommendation outside the applicable Guidelines range “for justifiable 17 reasons,” that Guideline’s commentary cautions that a justifiable reason does not arise “merely because of the defendant’s decision to plead guilty to the offense or to enter a plea agreement with respect to the offense.” See supra n.2. Messina argues that the district court misconstrued this commentary as a categorical bar when, in fact, the word “merely” signals that a guilty plea or plea agreement can be accompanied by circumstances presenting justifiable reasons for accepting a recommended Guidelines departure. Even if we were to adopt Messina’s construction, we are not persuaded that the district court overlooked the possibility of such circumstances either generally or specifically as to this case. Rather, the district court (1) reasonably construed the government’s sentencing recommendation “to be based exclusively on the fact that Mr. Messina agreed to plead guilty,” Tr., Nov. 8, 2013, at 10; and (2) correctly recognized that the Guidelines commentary expects something more to support a recommended departure, particularly one as large as that urged in this case. In challenging the first conclusion, Messina argued in the district court, as he does on appeal, that the government’s sentencing recommendation was based on more than his guilty plea or plea agreement, specifically, on the 18 government’s avoidance of a significant risk that, at trial, it would fail to prove the predicate acts pertaining to Pistone’s murder and Maniscalco’s attempted murder. The district court was not persuaded, observing that, in every guilty plea, the parties evaluate the risks of trial, with “the government weighing the risk that it could lose,” and “the defense weighing the risk that he or she could be convicted.” Tr., Apr. 4, 2014, at 49. In sum, the district court did not construe § 6B1.2(b)(2)(A) commentary to dictate that guilty pleas and plea agreements can never arise in circumstances presenting justifiable reasons for a Guidelines departure. Rather, it concluded only that every guilty plea is informed to some degree by the risks of acquittal or conviction and that nothing in this case indicated that the government’s avoidance of risk presented extraordinary circumstances providing a “justifiable reason” to accept a sentencing recommendation of half the effective Guidelines range. Notably, the government’s letter making its Rule 11(c)(1)(B) recommendation supports the district court’s view that Messina’s guilty plea presented no “unique” circumstances. Tr., Apr. 4, 2014, at 49. Nowhere in its letter did the government assert that Messina’s guilty plea allowed it to avoid an 19 unusually high risk of acquittal at trial. Rather, it stated that, but for the plea agreement, “the government would have been faced with the risk of trial, which in all cases includes the possibility of adverse verdicts on one or more counts of the indictment.” Prosecution Letter, Nov. 7, 2013, at 1 (emphasis added). We thus identify no procedural error in the district court’s conclusion that Guideline § 6B1.2(b)(2)(A) commentary lent support to its own independent decision not to follow the government’s sentencing recommendation in this case. Insofar as Messina argues that the prosecution’s critical trial witnesses would have faced serious credibility challenges, we identify no error or abuse of discretion in the district court’s failure to identify this as a “justifiable reason” for the recommended sentence. Not only does the government dispute that it would have called one of these witnesses at trial, but also the district court itself heard two of these witnesses, Michael Bitz and Albert Guido, testify at the Fatico hearing and credited their testimony that Messina recruited and armed Bitz to kill Maniscalco; that Bitz, in fact, shot Maniscalco in the back of the head with the firearm Messina provided; and that Messina reprimanded Bitz upon learning that Maniscalco had survived the shooting. 20 Messina challenges the district court’s favorable credibility assessment of these two witnesses, pointing to conflicts in their testimony. Mindful of the district court’s significant advantage in seeing the witnesses testify, we review its credibility finding only for clear error, which we do not identify here. See United States v. Iodice, 525 F.3d 179, 185 (2d Cir. 2008). The law affords a factfinder considerable discretion in resolving evidentiary inconsistencies. Inconsistency may prompt a factfinder to reject both versions of an account, or to accept one over the other based on a finding that one witness’s recollection is more reliable or credible than the other. Moreover, a factfinder who determines that a witness has been “inaccurate, contradictory and even untruthful in some respects” may nevertheless find the witness “entirely credible in the essentials of his testimony.” United States v. O’Connor, 650 F.3d 839, 855 (2d Cir. 2011) (internal quotation marks omitted); United States v. Coté, 544 F.3d 88, 99 (2d Cir. 2008) (holding that factfinder can resolve conflicts in witnesses’ testimony by rejecting extremes and concluding that truth lies “somewhere in between”). Here, the district court acted well within its discretion in crediting Bitz’s and Guido’s testimony implicating Messina in the attempted murder of Maniscalco. Indeed, 21 the court carefully explained its credibility finding, citing, among other things, (1) its assessment of each witness’s demeanor; (2) its recognition that the witnesses were describing their own criminal conduct, of which they had direct knowledge; and (3) its determination that the witnesses were consistent on the most critical facts implicating Messina, while any inconsistencies were collateral and to be expected given the passage of time. On this record, we identify no clear error in the district court’s decision to credit these witnesses. Further, in these circumstances, Messina cannot demonstrate abuse of discretion in the district court’s failure to identify a high risk that a jury would not have believed these witnesses, thereby justifying a sentence half Messina’s Guidelines range. Nor does the unpublished opinion in United States v. Vigil, No. CR 04‐ 0444, 2005 WL 3662908 (D.N.M. Nov. 16, 2005), cited by Messina, support his claim of Guidelines error. To the contrary, the district court there acknowledged that “problems with the United States’ case might not be an appropriate ground for departure under the Guidelines.” Id. at  (emphasis added). What the court there concluded was that problems of proof could be considered under 22 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) in making a Booker‐sanctioned determination to vary from the Guidelines. See id. Nothing in the record here indicates that the district court, which specifically acknowledged that it was not bound by the Guidelines and which meticulously detailed a host of § 3553(a) factors, did not recognize its authority to vary from the Guidelines based on the totality of circumstances. Indeed, the district court exercised that authority in imposing a non‐Guidelines sentence. We identify no error or abuse of discretion in its failure to vary further based on purported credibility problems confronting the prosecution at trial. See generally United States v. Fernandez, 443 F.3d 19, 32 (2d Cir. 2006) (holding that appellate court generally will not second‐guess weight district court assigns factors possibly relevant to sentencing). Insofar as Messina also argues procedural error in the district court’s review of an eight‐minute video retrospective of Pistone’s life, his failure to object to the video in the district court limits our review to plain error. See United States v. Marcus, 560 U.S. 258, 262 (2010) (stating that plain error requires showing of (1) error, (2) that is clear or obvious, (3) affecting “appellant’s substantial rights, which in the ordinary case means . . . affect[ing] the outcome 23 of the district court proceedings,” and (4) seriously affecting “fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings” (internal quotation marks omitted)). Messina cannot demonstrate plain error here because, as he acknowledges, 18 U.S.C. § 3771(a)(4) gives victims’ family members the right “to be reasonably heard” at sentencing. District courts have broad discretion both as to the type of information they may consider in imposing sentence and the source from which that information derives. See 18 U.S.C. § 3661; United States v. Broxmeyer, 699 F.3d 265, 268−69 (2d Cir. 2012); United States v. Duverge Perez, 295 F.3d 249, 254 (2d Cir. 2002). This court has never held that district courts cannot allow victims’ family members to be “heard,” in whole or in part, through a video presentation. Cf. United States v. Whitten, 610 F.3d 168, 189 (2d Cir. 2010) (upholding district court’s decision to allow prosecution to submit video evidence relating to murder victims to be submitted to jury in capital case). Thus, Messina can hardly demonstrate plain procedural error in the district court’s review of a video presentation here. Moreover, Messina fails to show that the video presentation here crossed the line from being moving—which is to be expected when family members discuss a murdered relative—to being inflammatory, thereby 24 implicating the defendant’s right to due process. See generally Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U.S. 808, 831−32 (1991) (O’Connor, J., concurring) (observing, in capital case, that account of how victims’ deaths affected surviving child was moving, but not so inflammatory as to deny defendant due process; murder victim need not remain “faceless stranger” at penalty phase of trial). Accordingly, we identify no procedural error in the imposition of Messina’s challenged sentence.
Messina asserts that his 18‐year sentence is nevertheless substantively unreasonable. To prevail, he must demonstrate that the challenged sentence “cannot be located within the range of permissible decisions” available to a sentencing court. United States v. Cavera, 550 F.3d at 189 (internal quotation marks omitted). That burden is a heavy one because, in determining substantive reasonableness, this court does not attempt to identify for itself a “right” sentence; rather, we defer “to the district court’s exercise of judgment” and “will set aside only those outlier sentences that reflect actual abuse of a district court’s considerable sentencing discretion.” United States v. Jones, 531 F.3d 163, 174 (2d 25 Cir. 2008) (stating that in “great majority of cases,” “broad range” of sentences must be considered substantively reasonable). The challenged 18‐year sentence, two years below the effective 20‐year Guideline, easily falls within the broad range of permissible decisions available to the district court. While we do not presume that a Guidelines sentence is necessarily substantively reasonable, that conclusion is warranted “in the overwhelming majority of cases,” United States v. Fernandez, 443 F.3d at 27, and thus especially when, as here, a defendant challenges a below‐Guidelines sentence. See United States v. Perez‐Frias, 636 F.3d 39, 43 (2d Cir. 2011) (observing that it is “difficult to find that a below‐Guidelines sentence is [substantively] unreasonable”); see also United States v. Rigas, 583 F.3d 108, 122−23 (2d Cir. 2009) (cautioning that review for substantive reasonableness should not be “rubber stamp,” and comparing such review to that under “manifest‐injustice” and “shocks‐the‐conscience” standards (internal quotation marks omitted)). Messina nevertheless maintains that the district court’s decision to disregard the government’s sentencing recommendation and to impose a prison 26 term nearly double what the government thought was appropriate indicates a decision well outside the range of reasonable sentencing discretion. We disagree. Sentencing responsibility is committed to the judicial, not the executive, branch of government. A prosecutor’s sentencing recommendation—and especially a non‐binding Rule 11(c)(1)(B) recommendation that is half the Guidelines range— does not automatically reset the boundaries for what is a reasonable exercise of judicial sentencing discretion. Certainly, it did not do so in this case. As the district court observed, Messina’s racketeering crime of conviction resulted in the loss of one human life and the effective destruction of another. Messina reasonably could have foreseen murder in the former instance and actively solicited murder in the latter. Messina’s racketeering also spanned a lengthy period of time, with loansharking and gun trafficking continuing to within a few years of his prosecution. His criminal activities were conducted, moreover, under the auspices of the dangerous and violent Bonanno crime family. In these circumstances, we conclude that the district court acted well within its sentencing discretion in rejecting the government’s 10‐year sentencing 27 recommendation and that its choice of a below‐Guidelines sentence of 18 years was substantively reasonable. In a further effort to avoid this conclusion, Messina faults the district court’s concern with sentencing disparity, noting that many confederates in fact received lesser sentences. The point need not detain us long. We understand the district court’s disparity observations to have focused more on perceived inconsistency in the prosecution’s sentencing positions among related cases rather than on its own imposition of disparate sentences. In any event, disparity is a relevant, but not controlling, sentencing factor. See United States v. Florez, 447 F.3d 145, 158 (2d Cir. 2006) (observing that “weight to be given [sentencing] disparities, like the weight to be given any § 3553(a) factor, is a matter firmly committed to the discretion of the sentencing judge”); see also United States v. Fernandez, 443 F.3d at 32. The district court acted well within its discretion in affording the most sentencing weight to the nature of Messina’s crime, its homicidal consequences, and his longstanding participation in organized crime, and in concluding therefrom that an 18‐year prison term was the appropriate sentence. 28 Accordingly, we conclude that Messina’s sentence is both procedurally and substantively reasonable.