Court Opinion

ID: 9480285
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:43:37.840535+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:35.384227
License: Public Domain

ENGEL, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur with parts I and II of the majority opinion, but respectfully dissent from the part III holding. In part III, the majority holds that it was error for the sentencing judge to base a departure from the Sentencing Guidelines upon the fact that crack, in contrast to ordinary controlled drugs within the Guidelines, is a particularly dangerous drug, as recognized by the majority opinion in several places, and that the public danger involved is even more serious when that form of drug is sold in close proximity to two public schools. In his comments, the sentencing judge expressed his opinion that the Guidelines did not make any apparent distinction between crack and other forms of controlled substances of that category and did not adequately address the dangers peculiar to the *458use of crack in a setting such as this.1 It seems to me that this is precisely the kind of intelligence the Guidelines are seeking to elicit from the trial judge, particularly in view of the Sentencing Commission's continuing duty to review and revise the Guidelines in the light of the experience it receives from the judges charged with responsibility for employing them in actual cases.
The thrust of the majority's reversal is that while it is acknowledged that crack houses present a threat to public safety, the majority cannot find that maintenance of such houses comes within the definition of “an aggravating or mitigating circumstance of a kind, or to a degree, not adequately taken into consideration by the Sentencing Commission.” 18 U.S.C. § 3553(b). My result, however, is to reach an entirely opposite position on basically the same law. I disagree that the trial judge made no other effort to distinguish this case from other crack cases in his departure. He clearly was concerned with the maintenance of the crack house within close proximity to two schools. He also was concerned with the fact that the Guidelines were deficient in failing to make a distinction for the particular seriousness of this drug, a distinction which he concluded could not have been drawn when the Guidelines were promulgated because the development was relatively new.
In my opinion, the majority unduly stresses the need for eliminating sentence disparity. A major objective of the Act unquestionably was to narrow the wide disparity in sentences, but it is evident from the Act, its history, and the comments of members of the Sentencing Commission that an equally important concern was the desire not to eliminate altogether the discretion of the sentencing judge where he or she could articulate a valid reason for the departure. The district court has done so here, and he has done so in the context of the facts in this case. While his observation concerning crack, as opposed to other forms of controlled substances, may be seen as a generalization, he did not indicate and does not appear necessarily to have sought to apply any automatic exception to the Guidelines which would be applicable in all cases. Thus, he has not violated the principle of uniformity of Guidelines, but instead has confined his decision to this particular case even though he partially based his departure upon what appears to be a growing realization of the specialized danger that the sale of crack imposes. I do not think it is invalid for this reason if he has not tried to make an automatic rule at variance with the Guidelines themselves and I cannot read that he was doing so here.
The majority opinion seems to hamstring the sentencing judge in a manner which I believe was not intended by either the Congress or by the Sentencing Commission which, indeed, hoped to get information from the front line of criminal law enforcement in order to assist it in its obligation to review the continuing appropriateness of the Guidelines.2 Certainly if a judge can*459not make such a distinction, then that kind of intelligence -will not be available to the Sentencing Commission. This intelligence is particularly desirable where our court is granted by the statute the specific right to review upward departures for potential abuse. The sentence imposed here was within the maximum permitted by statute and the decision to depart was rational, as I think even the comment of the majority would reflect. In my opinion, the sentence has resulted in no injustice nor any unacceptable claim of disparity, a claim which must inevitably attend any attack upon the employment of upward and downward departure rules.
I believe that the majority has unduly limited the quality and nature of aggravating circumstances which can be used for upward departures. If the same rationale were to be applied in a conviction for felon in possession of a firearm, then I would suppose, by the same token, the sentencing judge would be unable to make any valid distinction between the use of a .22 caliber squirrel pistol and the use of a 155 mm howitzer. If and when the Sentencing Commission promulgates a different guideline for the use of crack, as opposed to other types of Schedule II controlled substances, then I would imagine it would be appropriate to require, as we did in part II of the majority opinion, that this circumstance be considered in determining the offense level rather than the extent of departure. Until then, it seems to me that this is precisely the kind of circumstances which the Sentencing Commission hopes will be called to its attention through use of the departure procedure. It is this continuing flexibility that gives the system whatever vitality it may have.

. The trial judge correctly identified crack as a derivative of cocaine and hence as coming within the general categories of statutory Schedule II controlled substances, defined in Title 21. See 21 U.S.C. § 812(c), Schedule 11(a)(4); see also, 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and (b)(1)(B). Other courts as well have recognized this. See, e.g., U.S. v. Williams, 876 F.2d 1521, 1525 n. 4 (11th Cir.1989); and U.S. v. Maceo, 873 F.2d 1, 2 (1st Cir.1989).

. In the Guidelines Manual issued by the United States Sentencing Commission, the Commission had this to say concerning departures:
The new sentencing statute permits a court to depart from a guidelines-specified sentence only when it finds "an aggravating or mitigating circumstance of a kind, or to a degree, not adequately taken into consideration by the Sentencing Commission ...". 18 U.S.C. § 3553(b). Thus, in principle, the Commission, by specifying that it had adequately considered a particular factor, could prevent a court from using it as grounds for departure. In this initial set of guidelines, however, the Commission does not so limit the courts’ departure powers. The Commission intends the sentencing courts to treat each guidelines as carving out a "heartland,” a set of typical cases embodying the conduct that each guideline describes. When a court finds an atypical case, one to which a particular guideline linguistically applies but where conduct significantly differs from the norm, the court may consider whether a departure is warranted. Section 5H1.10 (Race, Sex, National Origin, Creed, Religion, Socio-Economic Status), the third sentence of § 5H1.4, and the last *459sentence of § 5K2.12, list a few factors that the court cannot take into account as grounds for departure. With those specific exceptions, however, the Commission does not intend to limit the kinds of factors (whether or not mentioned anywhere else in the guidelines) that could constitute grounds for departure in an unusual case.
The Commission has adopted this departure policy for two basic reasons. First is the difficulty of foreseeing and capturing a single set of guidelines that encompasses the vast range of human conduct potentially relevant to a sentencing decision. The Commission also recognizes that in the initial set of guidelines it need not do so. The Commission is a permanent body, empowered by law to write and rewrite guidelines, with progressive changes, over many years. By monitoring when courts depart from the guidelines and by analyzing their stated reasons for doing so, the Commission, over time, will be able to create more accurate guidelines that specify precisely where departures should and should not be permitted.
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... Of course, the Commission recognizes that even its collection and analysis of 10,000 pre-sentence reports are an imperfect source of date sentencing estimates. Rather than rely heavily at this time upon impressionistic accounts, however, the Commission believes it wiser to wait and collect additional data from our continuing monitoring process that may demonstrate how the guidelines work in practice before further modification....
United States Sentencing Commission, Guidelines Manual, § lA1.4(b) (Nov. 1989).