Court Opinion

ID: 9486018
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:36:05.032904+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:29.681482
License: Public Domain

RYMER, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
Because we review the reasonableness of sentences, not the reasonableness of analogies, I dissent from Part 11(A) of the majority’s opinion.1
The i'ssue on appeal is supposed to be whether the district court abused its discretion in arriving at a particular point of departure. United States v. Martinez-Gonzalez, 962 F.2d 874, 875 (9th Cir.1992). Instead, the majority focuses on whether the district court selected the single most suitable analogy. There is no authority for such an approach.
The Sentencing Reform Act provides that a court of appeals “shall set aside [a] sentence” if it “is outside the applicable guideline range and is unreasonable.” 18 U.S.C. § 3742(f)(2). Otherwise, the court of appeals “shall affirm the sentence.” Id. § 3742(f)(3). The Supreme Court has stated that “[t]he development of the guideline sentencing regime has not changed our view that, except to the extent specifically directed by statute, ‘it is not the role of an appellate court to substitute its judgment for that of the sentencing court as to the appropriateness of a particular sentence.’” Williams v. United States, — U.S. -, -, 112 S.Ct. 1112, 1121, 117 L.Ed.2d 341 (1992) (citation omitted). And in United States v. Lira-Barraza, 941 F.2d 745 (9th Cir.1991) (en banc), we said:
We review the degree of departure to determine whether it is “unreasonable.” 18 U.S.C. § 3742(e)(3). The statute does not mean every possible sentence but one is “unreasonable” — a reasonableness standard assumes a range of permissible sentences. We give weight to the district court’s choice within a permissible range. Reversal is required only if the choice is “unreasonable” in light of the standards and policies incorporated in the Act and the Guidelines.
Id. at 751.
The majority’s approach ignores these limitations on our reviewing jurisdiction by fixating on the most appropriate analogy and giving no weight to the district court’s choice of sentence. As the opinion acknowledges, physical damage done by a bomb is not irrelevant and “may be important circumstantial evidence of the bomb’s full destructive power.”2 If that is so, the loss table analogy relied on by the sentencing judge cannot be wholly unsensible. Nevertheless, the sentence is reversed — not because the district court abused its discretion in choosing a *1464point of departure outside a range of permissible sentences, Lira-Barraza, 941 F.2d at 751; Martinez-Gonzalez, 962 F.2d at 875,3 but because in retrospect it appears to the court of appeals that the district court could have chosen a better analogy from a different version of the Guidelines.
This is a far cry from expecting the district court to reason analogically, as our cases indicate it should.4 Shooting a squirt gun should not draw a departure higher than shooting a sawed-off shotgun. But I cannot believe that sentencing judges are supposed to rummage through X number of Guidelines manuals to see if there is a more apt analogy than one or more proffered by the parties.
Thus, I part company with the majority in two fundamental respects. First, the analogy it prefers — the weight table for explosive materials — was never mentioned by Cox, the government, the district court or the version of the Guidelines under which Cox was sentenced.5 Ironically, in United States v. Hernandez-Rodriguez, 975 F.2d 622 (9th Cir.1992), we indicated that we will not uphold a departure based on an analogy which “the district court did not purport to make.” Id. at 628. Yet here, we overturn a departure based on an analogy that occurred to no one until oral argument in the court of appeals.
Second, its approach substitutes our post hoc judgment about the best analogy for the district court’s. This turns the process on its head, flies in the face of our obligation to give weight to the district court’s choice of departure, and puts the court of appeals squarely in the sentencing business — a place we do not belong.
Except to say it disagrees with the analogy relied on in this ease, the majority offers no help to this sentencing judge or any other in arriving at a reasonable point of departure. It is impossible for me to figure out how the district court should have gone about its task any better than Judge Brewster did, given the fact that the value of damage to which he looked for guidance is both relevant and probative, the parties’ suggestions did not include reference to the analogy now preferred by the majority, and the applicable version of the Guidelines did not include the preferred analogy, either.
As I cannot agree with this approach, I dissent from Part 11(A).

. I concur in the rest of the opinion.

. Maj. at 1462.

. See also United States v. Galvez-Villareal, 3 F.3d 314, 316 (9th Cir.1993) (per curiam).

. See United States v. Cruz-Ventura, 979 F.2d 146 (9th Cir.1992); United States v. Lira-Barraza, 941 F.2d at 751.

. The weight table first appeared in § 2K1.3(b)(l) of the 1991 Guidelines. Cox was sentenced after the 1991 Guidelines were in effect, but the district court correctly applied the 1990 Guidelines for ex post facto reasons. See United States v. Warren, 980 F.2d 1300, 1304 (9th Cir.1992).