Opinion ID: 196027
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Step Three: Reasonableness.

Text: 31 We come now to the final step in the review process, focusing on whether the direction and degree of departure are reasonable. Diaz-Villafane, 874 F.2d at 49. The government says that the district court stumbled at this step by failing to explain how it arrived at such sizable sentence reductions and by exhibiting unreasonable leniency. We turn first to the absence of a particularized explanation of how the district court determined the extent to which it would depart. 32 1. The Need for Findings. In United States v. Emery, 991 F.2d 907, 913 (1st Cir.1993), we held that it is not necessary for a district court to dissect its departure decision, explaining in mathematical or pseudo-mathematical terms each microscopic choice made in arriving at the precise sentence. We opted instead for a pragmatic approach, recognizing the helpfulness of explanations but cautioning that when the court has provided a reasoned justification for its decision to depart, and that statement constitutes an adequate summary from which an appellate tribunal can gauge the reasonableness of the departure's extent, it has no obligation to go further and attempt to quantify the impact of each incremental factor on the departure sentence. Id. This approach reflects our view that judicial discretion, sensibly exercised, is in most cases the critical determinant of the degree of departure. See United States v. Aymelek, 926 F.2d 64, 70 (1st Cir.1991) (holding that, in respect to unguided departures, a sentencing court need not resort at all to analogies); Diaz-Villafane, 874 F.2d at 51-52 (disavowing any intention to reduce departure decisions to exercises in mechanistic bean-counting). 33 This approach is not discredited by cases such as United States v. Rosales, 19 F.3d 763 (1st Cir.1994). There, the district court gave only a terse summary of its reasons for departing, and offered no insight into how it settled upon the degree of departure. On appeal, this paucity of information compromised our ability to assess the departure's reasonableness and necessitated a new sentencing proceeding. See id. at 770. 34 To be on the safe side, a sentencing judge should always endeavor to explain the extent of a departure. Yet judges are human, and, like other human beings, they will sometimes fail to dot every i and cross every t. When such a slip occurs and a sentencing court neglects to explain how it fixed the extent of a departure, no bright-line rule obtains. Such situations must be handled on a case by case basis. The bottom line is that we eschew a purely mechanical test--one that merely asks whether or not the sentencing court has made findings explaining the degree of departure--in favor of a practical one--one that asks more broadly whether or not the sentencing court has supplied the appellate panel with sufficient information to enable it to determine the reasonableness of the departure. See, e.g., United States v. Quinones, 26 F.3d 213, 219 (1st Cir.1994) (stating that the court of appeals will overlook the omission of an explicit explanation anent the scope of a departure if the reasons for the judge's choice are obvious or if an explanation can fairly be implied from the record as a whole). 35 Here, unlike in Rosales, appellate review is facilitated by the sentencing court's detailed explanation of the circumstances warranting departure. This thorough exposition is adequate to explain the departures' extent. In particular, Judge Zobel's founded determination that the amount of loss grossly overstated the seriousness of the defendants' criminal activity weighs heavily. Precisely because the guidelines use amount of loss as a proxy for culpability in fraud cases, a supportable finding that the loss exaggerates the reality of events often is tantamount to a finding that the conventional sentencing range exaggerates a defendant's blameworthiness, and, thus, tends to invite a corresponding downward departure. So it is here. Accordingly, while we would have preferred a more deliberate discussion of the degree of departure, we see no purpose served in this case ... in remanding to make explicit what was implicit. United States v. Sclamo, 997 F.2d 970, 974 (1st Cir.1993). 36 2. The Departures' Extent. The second shot in the government's sling comes closer to the mark. The three departures currently under review are substantial; as we show in the margin, the least generous of them (applicable to Harris) reduces the sentence to one-third the bottom of the GSR, and the other two departures (applicable to Bonaiuto and DiCologero, respectively) manifest even greater clemency. 9 Nonetheless, we reject both the prosecution's implicit premise that unguided departures of this magnitude are presumptively unsound and its explicit premise that the particular departures sub judice are simply unreasonable. 10 37 We begin at bedrock. In respect to unguided departures, once the sentencing court identifies a departure-justifying circumstance and decides to act upon it, there is no algebraic formula that it can invoke to quantify the departure's extent. Hence, determining the size of such a departure is quintessentially a judgment call, Diaz-Villafane, 874 F.2d at 49, of a type that the law leaves almost entirely to the sentencing court's standardless discretion. This means, of course, that there is no single, correct, one-size-fits-all unguided departure; rather, in any given situation, a range of widely disparate options doubtless fall within the universe of acceptable sentencing outcomes. 38 Similarly, once the trial judge departs, there is no litmus test that an appellate court can employ to verify that the extent of an unguided departure is--or is not--reasonable. This stark reality, coupled with the district court's superior knowledge of the facts and its matchless ability to detect the subtle nuances that at times distinguish cases from the mine-run, argues convincingly for a deferential approach. See Rivera, 994 F.2d at 950 (discussing desirability of deference in light of sentencing court's superior 'feel' for the case) (quoting Diaz-Villafane, 874 F.2d at 50); see generally Bruce M. Selya & Matthew R. Kipp, An Examination of Emerging Departure Jurisprudence Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, 67 Notre Dame L.Rev. 1, 39-40 (1991) (explaining that, in reviewing the extent of an unguided departure, the sentencing judge's decision is accorded generous latitude in recognition of the court's firsthand knowledge of the case). We have consistently held, therefore, that appellate judges must exercise considerable restraint before disturbing the presider's reasoned definition of the degree of departure. See Rivera, 994 F.2d at 950; Diaz-Villafane, 874 F.2d at 49-50. 39 To be sure, this emphasis on deference places a considerable burden on the sentencing judge. To ease the weight of this burden, the judge is entitled to expect counsel's help. The lawyers are (or, at least, they should be) a fecund source of assistance, for they have every incentive to give the trial court the benefit of their thinking on issues in the case. Indeed, the prosecution, which has an institutional interest in seeing that justice is done, possesses an incentive that borders on an obligation. 40 Departures fit neatly within this conceptual framework. Judges must forewarn the parties of imminent departures, see Burns v. United States, 501 U.S. 129, 135-39, 111 S.Ct. 2182, 2185-88, 115 L.Ed.2d 123 (1991), and, once forewarned, the prosecution and the defense become full partners with the court in the departure pavane. Given the opportunity, the parties--out of self-interest, if for no more ennobling reason--should try to aid the court in determining what degree of departure best responds to the idiosyncratic features of the specific case. A prosecutor who forfeits this opportunity is in a peculiarly poor position to protest profusely when the judge, left to her own devices, thereafter exercises her discretion as she deems best. 41 This brings us to a special circumstance that undermines the argument the United States advances here. Judge Zobel invited the government to make recommendations at the disposition hearing concerning the appropriate degree of departure for each defendant. The prosecutor declined the invitation, clinging stubbornly to his position that the court should not depart at all. At oral argument in this venue, the government sought to justify this maneuver by suggesting that its underlying position--its claim that the district court could not lawfully depart--somehow relieved it of any responsibility to assist the court in fixing the degree of departure. We are unpersuaded. 42 The court below was faced with two distinct decisions: whether to depart, and if so, to what extent. Once the court resolved the threshold issue and solicited the parties' views on the second issue, the prosecution, given its distinctive role, could not sidestep the separate inquiry as to the degree of departure merely because it disagreed with the court's initial ruling. Counsel who lose a point can neither pout nor play the ostrich, but must move on and confront the next set of issues. See, e.g., United States v. Smolar, 557 F.2d 13, 17 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 866, 98 S.Ct. 203, 54 L.Ed.2d 143 (1977). Just as a lawyer who moves unsuccessfully for judgment as a matter of law must then give the court his suggested jury instructions on the issue or risk a less-than-favorable charge, so, too, a prosecutor who argues against a departure, loses, and then refuses to offer suggestions referable to the degree of departure runs a comparable risk. 43 In this instance, the chickens came home to roost: the district court, unable to pry a recommendation out of the prosecution, granted sizable sentence reductions. Under these straitened circumstances, the government has an especially hard row to hoe in its effort to convince us that the district court displayed unreasonable generosity in shaping the departures. Because reasonableness is not an absolute, but a construct that depends on the circumstances, Cotto v. United States, 993 F.2d 274, 280 (1st Cir.1993), the government's silence in the face of the lower court's timeous request for enlightenment concerning the appropriate extent of the departures affects our assessment of the departures' reasonableness. Put another way, the government, having been afforded an opportunity to influence a discretionary decision and having chosen instead to stonewall, can expect that doubts will be resolved against it when, thereafter, it attempts to second-guess that decision. 11 Cf. Paterson-Leitch Co. v. Massachusetts Mun. Wholesale Elec. Co., 840 F.2d 985, 989 (1st Cir.1988) (Courts, like the Deity, are most frequently moved to help those who help themselves.). 44 Against this backdrop, we conclude that the government has not shown the sentencing outcomes in this case to be beyond the realm of reason. In reviewing upward departures, we have ratified very dramatic deviations from tabulated sentencing ranges so long as they have been shown to be responsive to the record. In Diaz-Villafane, for instance, we affirmed a 120-month sentence though the GSR topped out at 33 months. In approving this upward departure--representing a 264% increase in the defendant's sentence--we deferred to the district court's firsthand knowledge of the case and its careful exposition of the reasons why it thought the situation to be markedly atypical. 874 F.2d at 52. Diaz-Villafane is not an aberration. See, e.g., United States v. Hernandez Coplin, 24 F.3d 312, 316 (1st Cir.) (upholding as reasonable 38-month and 46-month upward departures, representing increases of 380% and 328% over the respective GSR ceilings), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 115 S.Ct. 378, 130 L.Ed.2d 328 (1994); United States v. Doe, 18 F.3d 41, 48-49 (1st Cir.1994) (upholding as reasonable a 45-month upward departure that represented a 166% increase over the GSR's apex); United States v. Figaro, 935 F.2d 4, 8-9 (1st Cir.1991) (upholding as reasonable an upward departure that tripled the defendant's sentence); United States v. Rodriguez-Cardona, 924 F.2d 1148, 1156-57 (1st Cir.) (upholding as reasonable an 84-month upward departure that represented an increase of 165% over the GSR's apex), cert. denied, 502 U.S. 809, 112 S.Ct. 54, 116 L.Ed.2d 31 (1991). 45 Because we do not visualize departures as a one-way street leading invariably to higher sentences, the same reasoning applies ex proprio vigore to downward departures. This street runs both ways. Consequently, the amount of deference that is due to a district court's decision regarding the degree of departure does not expand and contract depending upon the departure's direction. See, e.g., United States v. White Buffalo, 10 F.3d 575, 577-78 (8th Cir.1993) (upholding as reasonable a downward departure to a term of probation as against a GSR of 18-24 months); United States v. One Star, 9 F.3d 60, 61-62 (8th Cir.1993) (upholding as reasonable a downward departure to a term of probation as against a GSR of 33-41 months); Sclamo, 997 F.2d at 972 (upholding as reasonable a downward departure to a term of probation as against a GSR of 24-30 months); United States v. Jagmohan, 909 F.2d 61, 65 (2d Cir.1990) (affirming district court's downward departure from GSR of 15-21 months to a term of probation). 46 We will not primp the peacock's plumage. Here, four critical factors militate against a holding that the departures are unreasonably steep: (1) the district court's supportable finding that the amount of loss vastly overstated the defendants' culpability, (2) the combined impact of the several external elements cited by the court (e.g., the greed displayed by the lender's senior management, the bank's negligence, the buyers' complicity, and the market's collapse), (3) the special circumstance that the government refused to assist the court in the daunting task of determining the departures' size, and (4) the breadth of the court's discretion in this area of sentencing. Though the question is close, we conclude that the three departures are all within, albeit tiptoeing along the outer periphery of, the universe of acceptable sentencing outcomes. 47 Finally, we think that the differences in the degrees of departure as among the various defendants are sustainable. As we have repeatedly observed, the amount of loss is a proxy for the seriousness of an offense. In a broad sense, then, the loss calculation is relevant to an individual defendant's culpability, and the departure for multiple loss causation is driven by the knowledge that, on occasion, the proxy will overstate culpability. In sentencing these defendants, the district court made explicit findings as to their relative culpability, rating the brothers Rostoff at the high end of culpability, Harris somewhat lower, Bonaiuto somewhat below [Harris], and DiCologero below that. 12 The court then linked the degree of departure to the degree of culpability. Once a departure-justifying circumstance has been identified, and the sentencing court has determined to act upon it, a construct that varies the degree of departure based on relative culpability (as related to the actual ground for departure) seems eminently reasonable. 13 48