Opinion ID: 656624
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Appropriate Basis

Text: 16 Downward departure is not permitted unless the district court has identified a mitigating circumstance of a kind or to a degree the Sentencing Commission did not adequately take into account when formulating the guidelines. 18 U.S.C. § 3553(b); U.S.S.G. § 5K2.0. A reviewing court must consider the reasons for departure actually articulated by the sentencing court. United States v. Montenegro-Rojo, 908 F.2d 425, 427 (9th Cir.1990). 6 There is, however, no requirement that the sentencing judge recite the specific language of 18 U.S.C. § 3553(b), the same language incorporated in Section 5K2.0. United States v. Sanchez, 933 F.2d 742, 745 (9th Cir.1991); United States v. Ramirez Acosta, 895 F.2d 597, 601 (9th Cir.1990). Section 4A1.3 indicates that 17 [t]here may be cases where the court concludes that a defendant's criminal history category significantly over-represents the seriousness of a defendant's criminal history.... The court may conclude that the defendant's criminal history was significantly less serious than that of most defendants in the same criminal history category ... and therefore consider a downward departure from the guidelines. 18 In the district court's view, Reyes' criminal history suggested he was a comparatively minor offender. His conduct was not at all of the magnitude of seriousness of most career offenders. Reyes' offenses involved considerably smaller amounts of drugs than those which would trigger the same sentence under the career offender provisions. Convicted for selling .14 grams of cocaine, he was subject to the same base offense level and sentencing range as if he had sold almost 4000 times that much. 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(C). Under the career offender guidelines a defendant convicted for a fraction of one gram of cocaine is accorded the harshest punishment due an offender trafficking in up to 500 grams. 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(C). Were he sentenced without reference to the career offender provisions, he would be subject to the same offense level and sentencing range as an offender associated with only up to twenty five grams of cocaine. See U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1(16). In Reyes' case that would mean he and another offender of equivalent criminal history would be sentenced to the same punishment range for offenses involving only 200 times (rather than 4000) times as much cocaine. 7 19 The Government formulates the stated basis for departure incorrectly. It focuses on the small quantity or miniscule amounts of drugs involved in Reyes' offenses, choosing to state the court's reason for departure as if it were a simple quantity-based argument fixing only upon the absolute amount of drugs at stake in the various offenses. The sentencing judge undertook a more nuanced approach based on comparison. Instead of emphasizing the absolute quantities of drugs involved, he cast the issue of quantity in comparative terms. Reyes' criminal history was comparatively minor. His offenses were minor as compared to others (not small on some absolute scale). This approach focuses on quantity only as a means to analyze the comparative treatment of offenders. Quantity serves merely as the means to compare the similar treatment of defendants whose offenses differ by exceptional orders of magnitude. 20 Not crediting the court's reason for departure, the Government argues that departure on the basis of the minuteness of the quantities is not permitted. It contends that the quantity of drugs involved cannot serve as a basis for departure because quantity already has been taken into consideration in the career offender provisions. Section 4B1.1 links base offense levels with the maximum statutory penalty available for the offense of conviction. If the defendant is convicted of an offense which subjects him to a minimum of five (but maximum of ten) year term, the career offender provisions assign him a base offense level of seventeen. If the defendant is subject to a minimum of ten (but maximum of fifteen) year term, he has a base offense level of twenty four. If he is subject to a minimum of fifteen (but maximum of twenty) year term, he is assigned an offense level of thirty-two. The chart is graduated in increments of five years of statutorily permitted penalties. Thus, while the guidelines themselves indicate no graduation based on quantities, the statutes they incorporate do. See e.g., 21 U.S.C. § 841(a). In the statutory context relevant here a penalty of five years attaches to drug convictions for anything less than fifty kilograms of marijuana; 8 a penalty of twenty years for 50-100 kilograms of marijuana; 9 a penalty of forty years for 100 to 1000 kilograms of marijuana. 10 Thus the Government argues, [i]n drug cases, maximum penalties vary because [the penalty provision of the statute they depend upon] keys the maximum penalty to the quantity of drugs sold. Consequently, as drug quantities vary, so does the career offender's offense level. Appellant's Opening Brief at 13. In its view this linked system for assigning one of the two elements 11 necessary to determine a guideline sentencing range evidences adequate consideration of the quantities of drugs involved in offenses subject to the career offender provisions. It cites Second and Sixth Circuit precedent directly supporting its formulation and analysis of the small-quantities basis for departure. United States v. Richardson, 923 F.2d 13, 17 (2d Cir.1991) (Commission adequately took small quantities into account, downward departures for career offenders convicted for small amounts of drugs are not justified on these grounds); United States v. Hays, 899 F.2d 515, 518-520 (6th Cir.1990), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 958, 111 S.Ct. 385, 112 L.Ed.2d 396 (1990) (same). 21 Because we conclude that the sentencing judge relied on a different basis for departure than the one described by the Government (and evaluated by Richardson and Hays ), our analysis is different. The question we address is not whether the career offender guidelines took into consideration small amounts of drugs, but whether it adequately considered the disproportionate treatment of drug offenders sentenced to the same penalty range for offenses involving drug quantities of exceptionally different orders of magnitude. 12 22 A sentencing judge is entitled to rely on 'any ... policy statement[ ] or commentary in the guidelines that might warrant consideration in imposing sentence.'  Lawrence, 916 F.2d at 554 (citing U.S.S.G. § 1B1.1); Adkins, 937 F.2d at 951-52. One of the three principles upon which the Sentencing Guidelines is founded is proportionality in sentencing through a system that imposes appropriately different sentences for criminal conduct of differing severity. U.S.S.G. Ch. 1, Pt. A(3), intro. comment. This commitment to proportionality is reflected in the guideline provisions supporting the district court's decision to depart. It undergirds Congress's mandate that a court depart from the guidelines, not only if a kind of mitigating circumstance was not taken into account but if it was not taken into account to a sufficient degree. 18 U.S.C. § 3553(b); U.S.S.G. § 5K2.0. It is the reason for Section 4A1.3's elaboration of the concept of over-representation in terms of recidivism and seriousness. 13 Seriousness, in this context, is only defined comparatively. Finally, the introductory chapter to the guidelines announces a heartland approach to sentencing. Despite the fact that in certain circumstances a particular guideline linguistically applies, the guidelines specifically contemplate that conduct significantly differ[ing] from the norm may warrant departure. U.S.S.G. Ch. 1, Pt. A intro. § 4(b); see also United States v. Bowser, 941 F.2d 1019, 1023 (10th Cir.1991). 23 In declaring that comparatively minor offenders should not receive the same career offender status, Transcript of Sentencing Proceedings at 25, the district court found the Commission's consideration of the relationship between drug quantity and penalty among differently-situated career offenders inadequate. The adequacy enquiry goes to the comparative treatment of offenders with the same career offender base offense level, all of whom receive the same penalty range for very different amounts of drugs. On this view, the problem is not that the Commission did not take into consideration the relationship between quantity and penalty, but that it did not adequately do so because it did not focus sufficiently on the resulting disproportionate punishment accorded career offenders in the same category. 14 Implicit in this position is the conclusion that the penalty range is not sufficient to differentiate between two offenders with the same base offense level. The range afforded simply does not reflect the degree of differential in the seriousness of underlying criminal histories or offenses. 15 24 We have noted that the Sentencing Act  'creates a sentencing guidelines system that is intended to treat all classes of offenses committed by all categories of offenders consistently.'  (emphasis in original). Lira-Barraza, 941 F.2d at 748 (citing S.Rep. No. 225, 98th Cong., 1st Sess. 51, reprinted in 1984 U.S.C.C.A.N. 3234). In the context of the career offender provisions the Fourth Circuit has concluded that: 25 The test for career offender status is certainly ... fraught with potential imprecision ... [The] definition encompasses an enormous variety of crimes ... [and] there is clearly a potential for wide discrepancy in the gravity of past antisocial conduct among career offenders. 26 Adkins, 937 F.2d at 952 (emphasis added). 27 The Nichols district court mathematically evaluated the extent of potential imprecision flowing from certain applications of the career offender guidelines. United States v. Nichols, 740 F.Supp. 1332, 1337-38 (N.D.Ill.1990), aff'd 937 F.2d 1257 (7th Cir.1991), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 112 S.Ct. 989, 117 L.Ed.2d 151 (1992). Defendant Nichols face[d] a minimum sentence of 35 years for possessing a gun while also possessing less than a gram of cocaine that he intended to distribute. Nichols, 740 F.Supp. at 1334. His prior offenses consisted of an assortment of residential burglaries, robbery, and auto theft. The court probed the relationship between the quantity of cocaine possessed by Nichols and quantities which could be possessed by another offender while still in the same base offense level and sentencing range. It concluded that although Congress had directed the Commission to sentence offenders at or near the maximum penalty authorized, it would not have intended that somebody found guilty of intending to distribute less than one gram of diluted cocaine be sentenced at or near the maximum for intending to distribute nearly 500 grams of cocaine. Nichols, 740 F.Supp. at 1337. On facts much less extreme than those presented by Reyes, the court found that a downward departure was warranted, in effect, because of the lack of proportionality. 16 28 We have approved departure based on disproportionality in other contexts. Where a district court found that the conduct of drug mules significantly differ[ed] from the norm, it departed on the ground that the mules' relative blamelessness warranted commensurate treatment. Valdez-Gonzalez, 957 F.2d at 649-50; U.S.S.G. Ch. 1, Pt. A intro. § 4(b); see also Alschuler, supra note 15, 917, 926-927 (guidelines not as successful in treating offenders of comparable culpability alike). These drug offenders were not subject to the career offender guidelines and the court departed in part on the strength of the analogy between its stated reason and the minimal role adjustment allowed in other circumstances not obtaining in that case, e.g., U.S.S.G. § 3B1.2. Id. at 647-48. The sentencing judge here relied instead on the over-representativeness of Reyes' career offender sentence range and the relative lack of seriousness of the offenses and history that put him into career offender status. Significantly, all these stated bases share a common thread--comparative evaluation and concern for proportionate treatment of offenders. 29 Nor is it the case that every offender caught with small quantities of drugs will benefit from this evaluation. In the court's estimation, Reyes' criminal history differed from most other career offenders because it uniformly involved minor offenses. The facts of his case made application of a career offender sentence unusually over-representative. Other judges evaluating different criminal histories have found otherwise. The Whyte court reviewed the sentence of a defendant caught with forty-one grams of crack and ten grams of cocaine whose past offenses included the sale of $10 of marijuana and possession of 1500 doses and 200 plastic packages of marijuana. United States v. Whyte, 892 F.2d 1170, 1171-72 (3rd Cir.1989). Because the defendant had drawn a loaded gun on the police officer attempting to arrest him, his record suggested he would carry a weapon as part of whatever needs arise from dealing drugs on the street. Id. at 1173 & n. 9. The district court concluded I cannot conscientiously say that the defendant's criminal history was significantly less than that of most defendants in the same criminal history category. Id. 30 The court found that penalizing Reyes with the maximum term permitted for trafficking ordinarily reserved for drug quantities far in excess of the amounts for which he had been convicted (both in the instant and prior offenses) grossly over-represented the seriousness of his criminal history. 17 While we agree that the Commission did take into account varying penalties linked to different drug quantities (through the assignment scheme described supra at 1385), we conclude that the sentencing ranges resulting in exceptional discrepancies were not adequately considered. See United States v. Ward, 914 F.2d 1340, 1348 (9th Cir.1990) (departure for reasons already considered by the guidelines based on the conclusion that circumstances significantly more egregious than the ordinary cases warranting adjustment). Thus the district court was authorized to depart in this case because the degree of the discrepancies had not been adequately considered.