Court Opinion

ID: 9482242
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:44:28.286089+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:51.490220
License: Public Domain

DAVID A. NELSON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The defendant has an extensive record as a small-time paperhanger and thief, and it is this record that seems to have been the most significant factor in the district court’s decision not to give the defendant credit for acceptance of responsibility, which would have lowered his offense level from 11 to 9. On the basis of the same record, the district court determined that the highest criminal history category specified by the sentencing guidelines (Category VI) did not adequately reflect the seriousness of the defendant’s past criminal conduct. The latter determination led the court to depart from the prescribed guideline range by (a) placing the defendant in a fictitious criminal history category (“Category IX”) which the court developed by extrapolation, (b) making an educated guess as to what the guideline range would be at the intersection of Offense Level 11 and Criminal History Category IX, and (c) imposing a sentence at the top of that guesstimated range.
Under the particular facts presented here, I believe it was inappropriate to use the defendant’s criminal history as a basis both for denying the acceptance of responsibility credit and for departing upward from the sentence range indicated by the *215guidelines. I do not quarrel with the district court’s conclusion that an upward departure was appropriate, and neither do I take issue with the defendant having been placed in “Category IX.” I think it was unreasonable, however, both to place the defendant in this imaginary category because of his prior record and to withhold the acceptance of responsibility credit for essentially the same reason.
The methodology followed by the district court would have produced an appropriate result, I believe, if the court had simply used an offense level of 9. Under this approach, the court would have ascertained from the sentencing table that the guideline range for a defendant in Criminal History Category VI with an offense level of 9 is imprisonment for 27-33 months. The court would then have found that the offense level that produces the same sentence range for a defendant whose criminal history category is III rather than VI is Offense Level 14. Finally, the court would have determined from the table that the sentence range for an individual with an offense level of 14 and a criminal history category three brackets above Category III is imprisonment for 37-46 months. It seems to me that this is the highest range that can be justified in the case at bar, given the structure of the sentencing table, and I would therefore remand the case for imposition of a sentence of imprisonment for not more than 46 months.