Opinion ID: 3049934
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Challenges to $19.4 Million Fine

Text: On appeal, PUGH primarily raises objections to the manner in which the district court arrived at the $19.4 million fine, but none of them has merit. The PSI contained extensive financial information about PUGH’s revenue and profits. The district court’s fact-findings are supported by the record and undisputed facts in the PSI, and PUGH has shown no clear error in any of them. PUGH also has shown no legal error in any of the district court’s calculations regarding the advisory guidelines fine range or in any other matters under the sentencing guidelines. PUGH’s brief as to the fine mainly resorts to claiming PUGH did not have 142 The court found, “[t]he September 1, ‘99 date signifies the first contract awarded to Pugh by the County after the August 1999 concrete work was done for McNair.” The court stated: “I have not attributed any profits made by Pugh in 2003, although the government may well have a good argument that profits in 2003 and revenues in 2003 continued to be effected [sic] because of the bribes paid in ‘99, 2000, 2001 and 2002.” The court added: “Likewise, I have not attributed any pre-September 1999 gain to Pugh Construction based upon the bribe scheme that was in place and paid by other contractors.” 165 adequate notice of certain arguments or adequate opportunity to respond. The record refutes those claims too. The parties submitted numerous sentencing briefs and offered a substantial amount of evidence as to PUGH’s revenue and profits. PUGH claims it did not know the district court would consider that the bribes were paid out of fear of losing contracts or future payments thereon. However, PUGH’s counsel, in arguing that the bribes were unrelated to the PRC, relied on the fact that the contractors feared what would happen if they did not pay bribes: [L]et me explain to [the court] why I think the contractors make such payments to public officials. .... [T]he best testimony that I heard about that was from Mr. William Dawson. Mr. Dawson was an engineer, independent, who was doing work for Jefferson County. . . . Mr. McNair invited him to come by the studio. And when he got there, Mr. McNair said, Mr. Dawson I’ve never asked you for anything before, but what I would like is for you to buy me an audio-visual equipment, some sort of a projector or something of that nature, and he had a book. And he said this is the model and this is what I would like to have. Well, Mr. Dawson didn’t want to do that. And he went home and he thought about it and finally he did it. And he did it because he was afraid of what Chris McNair would do to him if he didn’t. So when these people come and put the touch on a contractor or someone, I think it’s the fear of the unknown. In closing arguments, PUGH’s trial counsel maintained that any benefits PUGH provided to the County employees were given purely out of friendship. PUGH cannot now claim it had an inadequate opportunity to explain its motivation in 166 paying bribes or to prepare for the ultimate approach the district court took in deciding on the amount of the fine. If anything, counsel’s argument succeeded in reducing the amount of the fine imposed to well below the advisory guidelines range of $61,580,216 to $87,971,738. PUGH has shown no reversible error in any procedural aspects of the sentencing proceedings before the district court in PUGH’s case.