Opinion ID: 738505
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: was the extent of departure appropriate?

Text: 71 Having concluded that a departure in his case was appropriate, the final stage in our analysis is to determine whether the extent of the departure was reasonable. Our review of the sentencing court's decision in this regard is deferential. See Kikumura, 918 F.2d at 1110; cf. Koon, --- U.S. at ---- - ----, 116 S.Ct. at 2046-48 (holding that a decision whether to depart is reviewed for an abuse of discretion). However, there are objective standards to guide the determination of reasonableness. Kikumura, 918 F.2d at 1110. Those objective standards can be found in the Guidelines themselves, which provide analogies to which sentencing courts must look when making their determinations. See id. at 1110-14. 72 In the present case, the district court failed to undertake the analogic reasoning that Kikumura often requires. However, as in Kikumura, our examination of the record leads us to conclude beyond any doubt that even if we were to remand the district court would impose as high a sentence as possible up to 13 years. If a reasonable analogy existed to support the sentence imposed, remand would be a pointless exercise. We therefore proceed to consider whether such analogy exists. Id. at 1114 (footnote omitted). In so doing, we must bear in mind that [w]e are dealing here with analogies to the guidelines, which are necessarily more open-textured than applications of the guidelines. Id. at 1113 (emphasis in original). 73 Our task, then, is to determine if a reasonable analogy exists in the Guidelines that would justify a four- or five-level upward departure based on the disruption of governmental functions. We note the existence of a guideline for the conflict of interest crimes. See 1994 U.S.S.G. § 2C1.3. Under § 2C1.3, the base offense level for the criminal, financial and nonfinancial conflict of interest by federal officials is 6. See id. § 2C1.3(a). However, [i]f the offense involved actual or planned harm to the government, the Guidelines require an enhancement of 4 levels. See id. § 2C1.3(b)(1). Section 2C1.3 implies, then, that the Guidelines consider harm to the government worthy of a four-level increase. Since Baird's conduct in this case is infinitely worse than a mere conflict of interest that results in harm to the government, a fortiori, the four-level departure in this case was reasonable. 17 74 The judgment of the district court will be affirmed. 18