Court Opinion

ID: 9483383
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:19:16.582202+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:36.300651
License: Public Domain

BRIGHT, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I write separately in concurrence to emphasize that district judges still possess some discretion under guideline sentencing. The present case represents a good example of where the guideline commentaries fail to adequately or fully describe an offender’s conduct or background. In those situations, the sentencing court possesses the power to depart upward or downward from the guideline prescribed sentence, and the appeals court should affirm, as we have done in this ease.
A check of some of our cases indicates that we have frequently affirmed an upward departure. See, e.g., United States v. Estrada, 965 F.2d 651 (8th Cir.1992); United States v. Davila, 964 F.2d 778 (8th Cir.1992); United States v. Lloyd, 958 F.2d 804 (8th Cir.1992). But, in a seemingly inconsistent fashion, we have often refused to give the district court similar permission to depart downward from the guidelines. See, e.g., United States v. Desormeaux, 952 F.2d 182 (8th Cir.1991); United States v. Shortt, 919 F.2d 1325 (8th Cir.1990); United States v. Neil, 903 F.2d 564 (8th Cir.1990). Yet the same principles under-gird a departure in either direction.
On analysis of the case under consideration, the circumstances warranting departure rest only upon the difference of the degree of obstructive conduct between examples given by the sentencing commission and the actual conduct of the defendants in this case. It seems to me that sentencing courts may similarly address a lesser degree of conduct than that described by the sentencing commission in making a downward departure in sentencing. On the precedent of this case, that sort of reduced sentence logically should be affirmed.