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

Heading: Extent

Text: 32 A district court must give adequate reasons for departure and for the extent of departure. United States v. Faulkner, 934 F.2d 190, 191 (9th Cir.1991). The same reason may justify both decisions. See Ramirez Acosta, 895 F.2d at 601-02 (both the reason to depart and extent of departure explained in terms of under-representation of the seriousness of defendant's criminal history). In explaining the extent of departure, the court may draw analogies to other parts of the guidelines or other offenses. See Lira-Barraza, 941 F.2d at 750-51 & n. 13.  'Reversal is required only if the choice [of a departure sentence] is unreasonable in light of the standards and policies incorporated in the Act and the Guidelines.'  Martinez-Gonzalez, 962 F.2d at 876 (citing Lira-Barraza, 941 F.2d at 751); see also 18 U.S.C. § 3742(e)(4) (reviewing court must consider whether sentence is plainly unreasonable.) 33 The Government argues that a wholesale departure from the career offender provisions, one that departs from both the criminal history category and the base offense level, constitutes an unreasonable departure. It suggests that in the context of Section 4A1.3 a downward departure from the career offender provisions may reasonably consist only of a departure from the criminal history category of a career offender, and not from the base offense level also assigned under these provisions to the career offender. These the Government argues must be retained. Otherwise a sentencing judge can, in the name of downward departure, completely ignore the career offender guideline provisions. 34 When a court determines that the career offender guidelines apply it must take two steps: (1) automatically assign the defendant a criminal history category of VI, and (2) recalculate the base offense level according to the length of the penalty for the conviction. U.S.S.G. 4B1.1. Unlike any other section of the guidelines, the career offender provisions set both sentencing parameters at once. A defendant sentenced under the career offender provisions is subjected to a significant jump in penalty precisely because both steps--a boost in the criminal history category and a boost in the base offense level--are taken at once. 35 The Government essentially suggests that the one-jump-two-steps application of the career offender guidelines in which both steps are inseparable at the time of application, becomes, for the purposes of departure, a one-step modification where one step (criminal history point reduction) is separable from the other (base offense level reduction). It thus advocates understanding career offender departures as consisting only of the criminal history step. 36 The Government's support for its one-step analysis of career offender departures is very limited. It argues that the district court unreasonably departed because it failed to follow the text of Section 4A1.3. Section 4A1.3 has no particularized application to career offender departures. Nowhere does it specify or imply that career offender departures may consist only of downwards adjustments of criminal history categories. Under it 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 (when deciding whether to depart), and therefore consider a downward departure from the guidelines, (how much and for what reason not predetermined). U.S.S.G. § 4A1.3. The provision does suggest that the court use, as a reference, the guideline range for a defendant with a higher or lower criminal history category, but does not confine the court to this method of analogizing alone. Id. In the context of a departure from career offender guidelines, it cannot be read to preclude consideration of other analogies or departures from base offense levels. 37 The district court did not disregard the terms of Section 4A1.3 or go against precedent on departure 18 in viewing a departure from the career offender provisions as permissible even though it reduced the sentence more than a modification of only the criminal history category would warrant. Other courts have reasoned: 38 The jump into the career offender category was made in one [overall increase] under U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1. The district court reversed that single [overall increase] when it reasonably determined ... that placing defendant in the career offender criminal history category significantly over-represented the seriousness of his criminal history. 39 Bowser, 941 F.2d 1019, 1026 (10th Cir.1991) (district court departed downward to original offense level and criminal history category computed prior to application of career offender provisions). See also, U.S. v. Senior, 935 F.2d 149, 151 (8th Cir.1991) (same). However, in sentencing Reyes to the same punishment he would have received without reference to the career offender guidelines, the court did not provide an explanatory analogy. In different circumstances, we have analogized the career offender provisions to an on/off switch. United States v. Faulkner, 934 F.2d 190, 196, as amended, 952 F.2d 1066, 1073 (9th Cir.1991). It may be that like the Bowser and Senior courts and other district courts in the Ninth and Seventh Circuits, the district court, to give proper weight to proportionality, found it necessary in effect to switch off the career offender provisions. 19 Because the court failed to articulate its reasons for the degree of its departure, we must remand. Since recidivism is the hallmark of a career offender, the district court may well need to consider the recidivist tendencies of the defendant. An analogy that results in a reduction of both history and base offense level would not be unreasonable.