Court Opinion

ID: 9848501
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:21:05.199462+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:21.043809
License: Public Domain

*599BOGGS, Chief Judge,
dissenting.
I agree completely with Judge Sutton’s analysis of the Gall and Kimbrough cases, and their general application to cases such as this one. However, I read the record differently than the court does, and therefore reluctantly dissent.
The court agrees that the sentencing judge “must properly calculate the guidelines range” (Op. at 595) and then states that “the sentencing judge correctly calculated the guidelines range” (ibid.), but to me, the record shows to the contrary. At JA 27, the court begins by saying that “the nature of the way the calculations are done [is] designed to exacerbate the high numbers that we come up with here.... ” The court then goes on to say, at JA 28, “I’m going to knock off a bunch of these ... I’m going to strike the calculation in 37.... I’m going to strike the ones in 41 as well.” (referring to the two-level enhancement for material involving children under twelve and the five-level enhancement for possessing more than six hundred images.) The judge then follows the logical import of “striking these enhancements” by correctly computing that, as he then says, “the total offense level is more correctly 26, and obviously we have a criminal history level of I in this matter.” JA 28.
The Guidelines table shows that the range for an offense level of 26 and a criminal history of I is 63-78 months, and the court then proceeds to give a sentence of 66 months, exactly within this (incorrect) range. Thus, while I agree fully with the court that the district court could have given this same sentence by means of a properly articulated variance from the correct Guidelines range, I cannot read the record to say that is what the judge did in this case.
The court does not really defend, because it cannot, the district court’s statements, if, as I argue, they are clearly statements of a Guidelines calculation. Possessing material involving minors under the age of twelve is transparently not the same, or even close to the same, as trading child pornography, and the use of a computer is not the same as possessing more than six hundred images. If I could read the district court’s statements as just a hyperbolic shorthand for believing that Mr. Grossman’s Guidelines range was simply too high, I would do so. However, the transcript and the judge’s calculations, leading ultimately to his explicit statement that “I find that the total offense level is more correctly 26” (JA 28), simply do not allow me to hold that the clear mandate of Gall has been followed.
While it could be argued that my point here is simply a distinction without a difference in this case, I think it is important to emphasize that a correct Guidelines calculation continues to be essential. First, the Supreme Court has explicitly stated that this is so. In Gall, the court stated: “A district court should begin all sentencing proceedings by correctly calculating the applicable Guidelines range.” Gall, 128 S.Ct. at 596. It also emphasized that “the appellate court ... must first insure that the district court committed no significant procedural error, such as failing to calculate (or improperly calculating) the Guidelines range....” Id. at 597. We do not enforce these important statements if we allow a clearly improper calculation to be rescued by a proper statement of reasons that could justify a variance. When we allow that, we reduce the role of the Guidelines to a nullity, by making the calculation irrelevant because, whether right or wrong, those calculations are subsumed in the judge’s ultimate reasoning.
I therefore respectfully dissent.