Opinion ID: 2994307
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Koon and Meza

Text: Because defendants’ arguments are based on an understanding of the Supreme Court’s holding in Koon, and our own holding in United States v. Meza, 127 F.3d 545, 550 (7th Cir. 1996), we must first review these decisions. In promulgating the Sentencing Guidelines, the Sentencing Commission intended the sentencing courts to treat each guideline as carving out a ’heartland,’ a set of typical cases embodying the conduct that each guideline describes. Koon, 518 U.S. at 93 (quoting U.S.S.G. ch. 1, pt. A, intro. cmt. 4(b) (1995)). While a court generally must impose a sentence within the applicable Guidelines range, the Sentencing Commission realized that certain cases that for one reason or another were ’unusual’ would fall outside the heartland. In such atypical cases, the sentencing court must consider whether particular factors warrant a departure from the applicable Guidelines range. See id. at 94 (Atypical cases were not ’adequately taken into consideration,’ and factors that may make a case atypical provide potential bases for departure.). Therefore, before a district court is permitted to depart in a given case, certain features of the case must be found ’unusual’ enough for it to fall outside the ’heartland’ of cases covered in the applicable guideline. United States v. Leahy, 169 F.3d 433, 440 (7th Cir. 1999). However, the Guidelines do not leave the determination of whether a factor merits a departure from the heartland entirely to the discretion of the district court. Instead, the Sentencing Commission has delineated four categories of sentencing factors to determine whether a case is atypical: forbidden, encouraged, discouraged and unmentioned. Among these categories, only forbidden factors may never provide a basis for departure from a sentencing range. These factors include race, sex, national origin, creed, religion, socioeconomic status, physical conditions, such as drug or alcohol dependence, and economic hardship. See U.S.S.G. sec.sec. 5H1.10, 5H1.4, 5K2.12. District courts are otherwise free to depart if the court finds that there exists an aggravating or 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. 18 U.S.C. sec. 3553(b). In Koon, the Supreme Court recognized that a sentencing court must make two inquiries in determining whether a specific factor can be an appropriate basis for departure. 518 U.S. at 109. The court must first determine whether the [Sentencing] Commission has proscribed, as a categorical matter, consideration of the factor. Id. If the Commission has not determined that the factor is prohibited, the sentencing court must determine whether the factor, as occurring in the particular circumstances, takes the case outside the heartland of the applicable Guideline. Id. The Supreme Court held that for the courts to conclude that a [non-prohibited] factor must not be considered under any circumstances would be to transgress the policymaking authority vested in the Commission. Id. at 106-07. In Meza, we considered whether, in light of Koon, a district court could rely on a disparity between sentences of co-conspirators in order to justify a departure from a Guidelines range not subject to a statutory minimum. 127 F.3d at 549- 550. At the time of sentencing, the defendant in Meza moved for a downward departure based on a perceived disparity between the sentence called for under the Guidelines in his case and the sentences previously imposed on his co- conspirators. These co-conspirators had received downward departures pursuant to U.S.S.G. sec. 5K1.1 for cooperating with the government. Although the defendant refused to cooperate with the government, he still believed that a departure was warranted in his case. The defendant argued that Koon required the district court to consider the sentencing disparity as a potential basis for departure because the Sentencing Commission, as a categorical matter, has not proscribed any consideration of sentencing disparities. See Meza, 127 F.3d at 548. Although we denied the defendant’s appeal, we declined to hold that a sentencing court should never consider the disparity between sentences of co-defendants as a basis for departure from the applicable Guidelines range because of the prohibition against across-the-board rejection of a factor recognized by the sentencing court in Koon, 518 U.S. at 106-07, and the directive that the sentencing court should consider the need to avoid unwarranted sentence disparities among defendants with similar records who have been found guilty of similar conduct. 18 U.S.C. sec. 3553(a)(6). See also Meza, 127 F.3d at 549-50. Instead, we bifurcated our analysis between justified and unjustified sentencing disparities. We described a justified disparity as one resulting from a proper application of the Guidelines to the particular circumstances of a case./1 It is clear that the Sentencing Commission adequately considered justified disparities between the sentences as it is the Guidelines that produce the disparity, Meza, 127 F.3d at 550, and a factor may only be considered as a basis for departure if it has not been adequately taken into consideration by the Sentencing Commission in formulating the Guidelines. See 18 U.S.C. sec. 3553(b). Therefore, we concluded that a justified disparity could never serve as a basis for a departure from the Guidelines sentencing range. See Meza, 127 F.3d at 550. Because we concluded that the sentencing disparity that existed between co-conspirators in Meza was justified, we affirmed the decision of the district court not to consider it as a basis for departure. See id. Although unnecessary to the holding of the case, we also considered the applicability of considering an unjustified disparity, which we defined as one that does not result from a proper application of the Guidelines. In other words, it is a disparity in sentences that cannot be explained by a comparison of each defendant against the Guidelines as a set of rules. Meza, 127 F.3d at 550. Because we found no evidence that the Sentencing Commission considered the possibility of unjustified departures in formulating the Guidelines, we concluded that an unjustified disparity could potentially serve as a factor to consider in determining whether to depart from the applicable Guidelines range. See id.