Opinion ID: 195522
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the alleged sentencing error

Text: 25 To place appellant's final assignment of error into proper perspective, we divide this portion of our analysis into three sections. First, we rehearse the sentencing calculus. 8 Second, we discuss the question of appellate jurisdiction. Third, we consider the substance of the claimed error. 26
27 The district court classified the counts of convictions as comprising two groups, see U.S.S.G. Sec. 2E1.1, comment. (n.1), one for interstate transportation of stolen property, see 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2314, and one for money laundering, see 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1956(a)(1). 9 The judge determined that, under U.S.S.G. Sec. 2B1.2(a), the first group had a base offense level (BOL) of 4. The court then added 15 levels for bringing about a loss in excess of $2,500,000 (but less than $5,000,000), see U.S.S.G. Sec. 2B1.1(b)(1)(P); 4 levels for engaging regularly in the business of buying and selling stolen property, see U.S.S.G. Sec. 2B1.2(b)(4)(A); and 3 levels for performing a managerial role in the offense, see U.S.S.G. Sec. 3B1.1(b). These calculations yielded an adjusted offense level of 26. 28 The judge performed a similar set of computations for the second group of convictions. He determined that this group revolved around money laundering and, therefore, used U.S.S.G. Sec. 2S1.1(a)(1) to fix the BOL at 23. 10 The judge then added 7 levels because the value of the laundered funds exceeded $3,500,000, see U.S.S.G. Sec. 2S1.1(b)(2)(H), bringing the adjusted offense level to 30. 29 Since the second group produced a substantially higher adjusted offense level than the first group, the district court, following the praxis specified by the Sentencing Commission, see U.S.S.G. Sec. 2E1.1(a), set the first series of computations to one side and, instead, added 2 levels to the second group's adjusted offense level, pursuant to section 3D1.4, thus bringing the final offense level to 32. This produced a guideline sentencing range (GSR) of 121-151 months for a first-time offender. The court imposed an incarcerative sentence at the bottom of the range. 30 On appeal, Pierro concedes that these calculations are supportable, but claims that the lower court erred in not venturing a downward departure premised on mitigating circumstances. See 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3553(b) (providing, inter alia, for departures if the court ascertains that there exists a mitigating circumstance of a kind, or to a degree, not adequately taken into consideration by the Sentencing Commission in formulating the guidelines that should result in a sentence different from that described [in the GSR]); U.S.S.G. Sec. 5K2.0 (implementing statute). The government demurs. 31
32 As a matter of first principles, an appellate court is duty bound to confirm the existence of its own jurisdiction. See Juidice v. Vail, 430 U.S. 327, 331, 97 S.Ct. 1211, 1215, 51 L.Ed.2d 376 (1977); Mansfield, Coldwater & Lake Mich. Ry. Co. v. Swan, 111 U.S. 379, 382, 4 S.Ct. 510, 511-12, 28 L.Ed. 462 (1884); In re Dein Host, Inc., 835 F.2d 402, 404 (1st Cir.1987). We do so here. 33 It is by now axiomatic that a criminal defendant cannot ground an appeal on a sentencing court's discretionary decision not to depart below the guideline sentencing range. See, e.g., United States v. Tardiff, 969 F.2d 1283, 1290 (1st Cir.1992); United States v. Amparo, 961 F.2d 288, 292 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 113 S.Ct. 224, 121 L.Ed.2d 161 (1992); United States v. Hilton, 946 F.2d 955, 957 (1st Cir.1991); United States v. Romolo, 937 F.2d 20, 22 (1st Cir.1991). This rule, however, admits of certain exceptions. One such exception applies when the sentencing court's declination to depart results from a mistake of law. See Amparo, 961 F.2d at 292; Hilton, 946 F.2d at 957. Consequently, appellate jurisdiction may attach if it appears that the failure to depart stemmed from the sentencing court's mistaken impression that it lacked the legal authority to deviate from the guideline range or, relatedly, from the court's misapprehension of the rules governing departures. United States v. Gifford, 17 F.3d 462, 473 (1st Cir.1994). 34 Counsel often confuse the exception and the rule. If the judge sets differential factfinding and evaluative judgments to one side, and says, in effect, this circumstance of which you speak, even if it exists, does not constitute a legally sufficient basis for departure, then the correctness of that quintessentially legal determination may be tested on appeal. But if the judge says, in effect, either that this circumstance of which you speak has not been shown to exist in this case, or, alternatively, that while this circumstance of which you speak might exist and might constitute a legally cognizable basis for a departure in a theoretical sense, it does not render this particular case sufficiently unusual to warrant departing, then, in either such event, no appeal lies. 35 We think that this case fits within the exception rather than the rule, and, hence, that we have jurisdiction to consider the assigned error. At the disposition hearing, appellant identified three possible grounds for departure, namely, (1) that his case was, in essence, a sheep in wolves' clothing--a garden-variety theft-of-property case, treated by the guidelines as a money laundering case, and, therefore, well outside the heartland of the money laundering guideline; (2) that his GSR was skewed by double counting; and (3) that, if sentenced within the GSR, his punishment would be vastly disproportionate to his codefendants' sentences. The district court rejected all three bases for departure. Read objectively, the district court seems to have said, in effect, that even if appellant could prove the subsidiary facts upon which his arguments rested--that his conviction grew out of a scheme to steal property rather than a scheme to launder money, that double counting influenced the composition of the GSR, and that his coconspirators received sentences milder than the GSR in his case prophesied--none of the cited circumstances would constitute a legally cognizable reason for imposing a sentence below the GSR. If the district court erred in this determination, the error was a purely legal one. Thus, appellate jurisdiction attaches. 36
37 We address separately appellant's claim that his conduct fell outside the heartland of the money laundering statute, thereby justifying a downward departure. We then proceed to examine appellant's remaining sentence-related claims. 38 1. The Essence of the Offense. In analyzing appellant's heartland claim, we first step back to review the anatomy of mitigating circumstance departures. The method of the sentencing guidelines demands that, in the ordinary case, the judge apply the guidelines, make such interim adjustments as the facts suggest, compute a sentencing range, and then impose a sentence within that range. See 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3553(a), (b); see also United States v. Rivera, 994 F.2d 942, 946 (1st Cir.1993); United States v. Diaz-Villafane, 874 F.2d 43, 47-48 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 862, 110 S.Ct. 177, 107 L.Ed.2d 133 (1989). Because departures are the exception, rather than the rule, see Diaz-Villafane, 874 F.2d at 52, it is only in the extraordinary case--the case that falls outside the heartland for the offense of conviction--that the district court may abandon the guideline sentencing range and impose a sentence different from the sentence indicated by mechanical application of the guidelines. United States v. Jackson, 30 F.3d 199, 201 (1st Cir.1994); see also Rivera, 994 F.2d at 947-48. 39 When a sentencing court considers a mitigating circumstance departure, the relevant circumstance must be of a kind cognizable under the guidelines, see Rivera, 994 F.2d at 949, and must render the case special or unusual, see id. The determination of whether a particular circumstance is sufficiently special or unusual to warrant departing presents a question of law, the determination of which is reviewed de novo on appeal. See Jackson, 30 F.3d at 202; Diaz-Villafane, 874 F.2d at 49. In this case, we do not think that the relationship between the statutes underlying appellant's several convictions constitutes a mitigating circumstance upon which a departure can be predicated. 40 We accept appellant's two subsidiary premises. First, his involvement in money laundering arose out of his use of proceeds from the sale of stolen property as security for bank loans. See 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1956(a)(1)(A) (criminalizing the conduct of a financial transaction with knowledge that the property involved in the transaction represents the proceeds of specified forms of illegal activity). Second, the Sentencing Commission has chosen to punish money laundering with particular severity, and the introduction of the money laundering guideline into the sentencing calculus therefore resulted in a markedly higher GSR and a longer prison term for appellant, see supra Part III(A). 41 Be that as it may, we cannot accept the conclusion that appellant draws from these two premises. The money laundering statute does not exempt from its reach those persons who launder money merely in the furtherance of underlying criminal activities. Nor does the statute, in terms, suggest that such persons' actions perforce fall outside the statute's proper scope. On the contrary, the crime colloquially known as money laundering is committed whenever a person, knowing that the property involved in a financial transaction represents the proceeds of some form of unlawful activity nevertheless conducts or attempts to conduct ... a financial transaction which in fact involves [such] proceeds. 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1956(a)(1). 42 In our view, Congress meant this statute to address, among other things, conduct undertaken subsequent to, although in connection with, an underlying crime, rather than merely affording an alternative means of punishing the underlying crime itself. See United States v. Johnson, 971 F.2d 562, 569 (10th Cir.1992). Thus, our reading of the same statute recently led us to observe, in countering an argument strikingly similar to that stitched together by Pierro, that Congress intended money laundering to be a separate crime distinct from the underlying offense that generated the money. United States v. LeBlanc, 24 F.3d 340, 346 (1st Cir.1994). Other cases have reached essentially the same conclusion. See, e.g., Johnson, 971 F.2d at 569 (stating that Congress designed the money laundering statute to fill a lacuna with respect to the post-crime hiding of ill-gotten gains); see also United States v. Edgmon, 952 F.2d 1206, 1214 (10th Cir.1991) (holding that principles of double jeopardy do not bar prosecution and punishment for both money laundering and conversion based on the same overall conduct), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 112 S.Ct. 3037, 120 L.Ed.2d 906 (1992). 43 There is little question that the appellant's conduct fits snugly within this framework. Appellant argues that although the facts which formed the predicate for the convictions were within the strict linguistic parameters of the sentencing guidelines for money laundering, the defendant's actual conduct did not fall within [what the Sentencing Commission intended to punish as] money laundering.... This is virtually a replica of the argument we rejected in LeBlanc, 24 F.3d at 345. 11 Because appellant's offense conduct, though arising out of his participation in interstate transportation of stolen property, comes well within the heartland of the money laundering statute and guideline, the court below correctly concluded, as a matter of law, that it could not base a downward departure on this circumstance. See LeBlanc, 24 F.3d at 347; see also United States v. Limberopoulos, 26 F.3d 245, 249 (1st Cir.1994) (rejecting analogous argument; holding that district court's view that defendant's conduct fell within the heartland of a regulatory statute but outside the heartland of a drug trafficking statute reflected a misunderstanding of the basic objectives of the two statutes, their interplay, and their interposition vis-a-vis the sentencing guidelines). 44 2. Remaining Bases for Departure. Appellant suggests two additional ways in which the trial court appropriately could have departed downward. Neither suggestion has any merit. 12 45
46 First, appellant contends that a downward departure could have been predicated on the fact that double counting boosted his GSR to heights not contemplated by the Sentencing Commission. In this regard, appellant asserts that the same money was factored into the sentencing court's computations twice--once in calculating the offense level for money laundering and once in calculating the offense level for interstate transportation of stolen property. We cannot accept this assertion. 47 It is not at all clear that any double counting took place. As discussed above, where an underlying crime occurs antecedent to money laundering, the offenses are considered separate and distinct for sentencing purposes. This distinctiveness requires that a separate computation be made for each group of offenses. See United States v. Lombardi, 5 F.3d 568, 571 (1st Cir.1993) (holding that an anomaly would result if a sentencing court were compelled to treat mail fraud and money laundering in the same sentencing category). Appellant dealt in stolen property having a value in excess of $2,500,000 and also laundered over $3,500,000 in profits garnered from the resale of stolen property. Hence, the punishment for engaging in each of these criminal activities must be calculated independently. See id. 48 By the same token, each crime has its own measure of loss; the value of the property stolen from DEC and the dollar amount of ill-gotten sale proceeds used by MoGro to secure financial support may turn out to be the same, but they are arrived at differently. The mere existence of some indeterminate degree of overlap between these figures does not constitute double counting. See, e.g., United States v. Lilly, 13 F.3d 15, 18 (1st Cir.1994) (holding that overlapping uses of same data anent monetary loss did not constitute double counting in the particular circumstances of the case). 49 To say more would be to trespass on the reader's indulgence. Even if the situation here could be described in some useful way as comprising double counting, the phenomenon is not sufficiently special or unusual to warrant a downward departure. After all, in the sentencing context double counting is not rare--and the practice is often perfectly proper. See id. at 19. 50
51 The final circumstance on which appellant relies in support of a downward departure is disproportionality--the comparative severity of his sentence as contrasted with the sentences to be served by other coconspirators. 13 The district court believed that it lacked authority to depart on this basis. We concur. See, e.g., United States v. Wogan, 938 F.2d 1446, 1448 (1st Cir.), (holding that a perceived need to equalize sentencing [among codefendants] ... will not permit a departure), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 112 S.Ct. 441, 116 L.Ed.2d 460 (1991); United States v. Carr, 932 F.2d 67, 73 (1st Cir.) (explaining that judicial dissatisfaction with comparative outcomes cannot justify departure), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 112 S.Ct. 112, 116 L.Ed.2d 82 (1991). 52 3. Need for Remand. The district court sentenced appellant in February 1993. Approximately five months later, this court decided Rivera, 994 F.2d 942, a case that elaborated the circuit's departure jurisprudence. Appellant invites us to remand so that the district court may reexamine the sentence in light of Rivera. We decline the invitation. 53 Building a body of precedent is an evolutionary process. If the mere fact that a new opinion sheds light on an area of the law automatically required appellate courts to remand for reconsideration all cases pending on direct appeal that dealt with the same area of the law, the system would become a shambles. Remand is required only when there is a realistic possibility that the new precedent, properly applied, will alter or otherwise materially affect the result reached in the trial court. 14 See, e.g., Gifford, 17 F.3d at 475. Applying this benchmark, there is no need to remand this case for resentencing. 54 When a newly minted precedent clarifies a corner of the law while a case involving the same (or a closely related) point is pending on direct appeal, the threshold question is almost always whether the trial court's analysis would have differed in some material respect if it had had the benefit of the clarification. Here, that question demands a negative answer: Judge Woodlock fully anticipated our opinion in Rivera, carefully sifted the record to determine whether any unusual circumstances existed that might warrant a downward departure, and, discovering none, correctly abjured the desired departure. Hence, a remand would serve no useful purpose as the analytic approach would be essentially unchanged and would, therefore, produce the same conclusions. See, e.g., United States v. Smith, 14 F.3d 662, 666 (1st Cir.1994) (affirming district court's pre-Rivera refusal to depart under Rivera standard); see also United States v. Sclamo, 997 F.2d 970, 974 (1st Cir.1993) (affirming pre-Rivera downward departure and declining to remand for reconsideration in light of Rivera). 55 We hasten to add that even when a district court has not fully anticipated an emergent clarification, a remand will not necessarily follow. For example, when the court's subsidiary findings of fact are reasonably explicit, unaffected by its legal error, and subject to reuse, a remand would be an empty exercise. See Societe des Produits Nestle v. Casa Helvetia, Inc., 982 F.2d 633, 642 (1st Cir.1992). In such a situation, so long as the court of appeals can arrange the untainted findings along the proper legal matrix, it need not remand. See United States v. Mora, 821 F.2d 860, 869 (1st Cir.1987); see also Figueroa-Rodriguez v. Aquino, 863 F.2d 1037, 1041 (1st Cir.1988). 56 This principle offers an alternative basis for denying appellant's request for a remand. Even if, without the benefit of Rivera, the district court's grasp of departure jurisprudence proved faulty--and we do not believe that to have been the case--a remand would not be exigible. For all the skillful lawyering that has been mustered on appellant's behalf, he has been utterly unable to isolate any special or unusual feature of this case which, under Rivera, could support a downward departure.