Opinion ID: 3066175
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Osinger’s Sentence

Text: Osinger asserts that the district court erred in denying his request for a downward departure premised on acceptance of responsibility. According to Osinger, he intended to plead guilty and proceeded to trial only to preserve his constitutional challenge to 18 U.S.C. § 2261A. “The Sentencing Guidelines allow district courts to grant a two-level downward adjustment to a defendant who clearly demonstrates acceptance of responsibility for his offense.” Ramos-Medina, 706 F.3d at 940 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). “The defendant bears the burden of showing that he has accepted responsibility for his actions.” Id. (citation omitted). At trial, Osinger did not simply pursue his First Amendment challenge to 18 U.S.C. § 2261A. Instead, Osinger asserted that his actions were the legal equivalent of “being prosecuted for ripping the label off a mattress. . . .” His counsel argued that Osinger was “charged with stalking in the absence of evidence to prove it. There is no history of any violence. There is no history of any threat of violence. There is no history that he ever waited outside her house. There is no history that he ever visited her in Los Angeles.” His counsel maintained that “[w]hat the government is asking in this case is that the conviction rest solely on the fact that somebody hurt somebody else’s feelings really, really badly.” Osinger also challenged the jurisdictional basis for the UNITED STATES V. OSINGER 21 charges by arguing that he thought that he was communicating only with individuals in Chicago where Osinger resided. Osinger asserted that there was no evidence of any threats and that he did not direct the e-mails to V.B., as he sent them only to her co-workers. Osinger argued that there was “[n]o evidence of repetitious conduct and no evidence of malice. A love obsession is not malice. . . .” Finally, Osinger maintained that he was not guilty of stalking because he did not contact V.B. after sending the pictures. “On this record, the district court did not clearly err in finding that [Osinger’s] actions were inconsistent with acceptance of responsibility. . . .” Ramos-Medina, 706 F.3d at 942. In addition to challenging his guilt at trial, Osinger failed to demonstrate the requisite contrition to warrant a downward adjustment for acceptance of responsibility. See United States v. Dhingra, 371 F.3d 557, 568 (9th Cir. 2004), as amended (holding that the defendant “did not meet his burden of demonstrating ‘genuine contrition for his acts’”) (citation omitted). Osinger expressed that he “deeply regret[ted] his conduct.” However, he conveyed his regrets in the context that “as in many breakups things were said and done that people regret. Here, Mr. Osinger said and did things out of anger. . . .” Rather than directly accepting responsibility for his conduct, Osinger intimated that his actions stemmed from V.B.’s refusal to reconcile. Such equivocal expressions of contrition “did not meet [the defendant’s] burden of demonstrating genuine contrition for his acts,” and “it was not clearly erroneous for the district court to deny downward adjustment for acceptance of responsibility.” Dhingra, 371 F.3d at 568 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). 22 UNITED STATES V. OSINGER
Finally, Osinger contends that his sentence was unreasonable because another defendant received a more lenient sentence despite engaging in more extensive and intrusive stalking. However, Osinger was not similarly situated to the defendant who received a more lenient sentence after pleading guilty in a different case. See United States v. Espinoza-Baza, 647 F.3d 1182, 1195 (9th Cir. 2011) (“It does not matter for the purposes of § 3553(a) that [the defendant] can point to other criminal defendants who may have received lighter sentences under materially different circumstances. . . .”) (citation, alterations, and internal quotation marks omitted). Osinger’s sentencing disparity argument is undermined by his more extensive criminal history. See id. (observing that the defendant was not similarly situated to other defendants because “[t]here is nothing in the record suggesting that these other defendants had comparable criminal histories”) (citation omitted). Moreover, Osinger’s sentence was at the low end of the guidelines range. See United States v. Green, 592 F.3d 1057, 1072 (9th Cir. 2010) (“We have trouble imagining why a sentence within the Guidelines range would create a disparity, since it represents the sentence that most similarly situated defendants are likely to receive.”) (citation and alteration omitted). We hold that Osinger’s sentence was procedurally and substantively reasonable.