Court Opinion

ID: 9492882
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:52:37.516818+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:51.276621
License: Public Domain

FLAUM, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
While I agree with the majority’s outcome in this case, I write separately to explain the different reasoning by which I reach this conclusion. In United States v. Seacott, we held that lack of personal profit motive in a fraud case is a “legally insufficient reason to depart downward from the applicable Guidelines range.” 15 F.3d 1380, 1387 (7th Cir.1994). The district court interpreted Seacott’s holding as “foreelosflng]” it from considering failure to profit as a departure factor. I believe that the district court’s interpretation of our holding in Seacott was correct. However, two years after Seacott, the Supreme Court’s decision in Koon found that *752“for the courts to conclude a factor must not be considered under any circumstances would be to transgress the policy-making authority vested in the Commission.” Koon, 518 U.S. 81, 106-07, 116 S.Ct. 2035, 135 L.Ed.2d 392 (1996). The Court then held that “a federal court’s examination of whether a factor can ever be an appropriate basis for departure is limited to determining whether the Commission has proscribed, as a categorical matter, consideration of the factor.” Id. at 109, 116 S.Ct. 2035. Failure to profit is not a ground expressly forbidden by the Commission. See U.S.S.G. Ch. 1, Pt. A 4(b). Thus, to the extent that our decision in Seacott precluded district courts from considering personal profit motive as a basis for departure, it has been superseded by the Koon analysis. It is understandable that the district court was reluctant to rule in a manner contrary to our holding in Seacott before this Court had interpreted Koon’s effect on that case. However, in light of Koon, I believe that it was an error of law for the district court to conclude that it was foreclosed by Seacott from considering Corry’s failure to profit as a departure factor.
On the facts of this case, however, the district court’s legal error is harmless. Corry’s fraud involved a deception conducted to keep a family business afloat. This business, moreover, employed Corry at a substantial salary. When Corry’s fraud kept the family business viable, Cor-ry benefitted both directly in terms of her continued salary and indirectly from the benefit to her immediate family. The facts of this case plainly do not support the argument that Corry did not personally profit from the fraud she committed. Therefore, it would have been an abuse of discretion for the district court to have granted a downward departure on this basis even if that court had appropriately concluded that it was permitted to consider this ground. See Koon, 518 U.S. at 99-100, 116 S.Ct. 2035 (stating that review of a district court’s decision to grant a sentencing departure is for abuse of discretion). Thus, the legal error did not affect Corry’s ultimate sentence and was harmless.