Court Opinion

ID: 9483385
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:19:16.862936+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:36.304695
License: Public Domain

BRIGHT, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
In United States v. Wint, 974 F.2d 961 (8th Cir.1992), this court (Judges Wollman, Bright and Ross) affirmed Judge Rosen-baum’s upward departure from the Sentencing Guidelines. In that case, Judge Rosenbaum departed upward for a valid reason: the Sentencing Commission had not considered the severity of the offender’s conduct in calculating the offender’s sentencing range. In the instant case, the majority reverses Judge Rosenbaum for a six-month downward departure from the guideline range for perfectly good reasons.
Under 18 U.S.C. section 3553(b) (1988), a district court has the authority to depart from the guideline range if “the court finds that there exists an aggravating or mitigating circumstance of a kind, or to a degree, not adequately taken into consideration by the Sentencing Commission in formulating the guidelines that should result in a sentence different from that described.” Judge Rosenbaum identified two mitigating circumstances warranting departure.
First, the Commission failed to consider the impact of the mandatory minimum sentences created by Congress in drafting the Guidelines. Congress mandated a minimum sentence of sixty months for Latti-more’s crime, possessing with intent to distribute more than five grams of crack. 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(B)(iii) (1988). Obviously, the Sentencing Commission was aware of the statutory minimum sentences when it drafted the applicable Guidelines for Latti-more’s offense, as indicated ante, at 964-965. However, the Commission failed to honor Congress’ express intent from the language of the law when the Commission issued those Guidelines. The guideline range for an offender convicted of possessing five grams of crack is sixty-three to seventy-eight months. Thus, although Congress intended the minimum sentence for such a crime to be sixty months, the Commission ignored that intent and set its minimum sentence at sixty-three months.
Some would argue that this difference does not matter because Lattimore was sentenced for possessing not five grams of crack, but twenty-three grams of crack. However, by setting the lowest sentencing range at a level above that which Congress intended, the Commission skewed upward all the sentencing ranges for greater amounts of crack. The Commission uses a consistent mathematical formula in calculating the sentencing ranges for various offense levels. U.S.S.G. § 5A—Sentencing Table; see also 28 U.S.C. § 994(b)(2) (1988) (setting mathematical requirements for sentencing ranges calculated by Commission). If the Commission had set the minimum sentence for Lattimore’s crime at sixty months, then that decision would have resulted in lower sentencing ranges for defendants convicted of handling larger amounts of crack. Therefore, by failing to consider Congress’ intent in setting the minimum sentence for possessing five grams of crack, the Commission miscalculated the sentencing range for Lattimore’s crime of possessing twenty-three grams of crack. The district judge recognized the *977defect, which the Commission overlooked or improperly disregarded, and, therefore, made a proper departure.
A further ground given by the district court for its departure was that the Sentencing Commission failed to consider the racially disparate impact of the crack Guidelines when it drafted them. The majority misanalyzes the district court’s statement, which it quotes ante, at 974-75. The district court did not hold that the guideline range recommended for Lattimore was in violation of the Due Process Clause. Thus, the majority’s recitation of this court’s decisions rejecting due process challenges to the 100:1 ratio for crack is irrelevant. The district court noted the racial discrimination that has resulted from the mandatory minimum sentences for crack, and the accompanying Guidelines, serve as grounds for departure, not as a basis to declare the statute unconstitutional.
Although statistics differentiating crack and powder cocaine do not exist on the federal level, in Minnesota (where Latti-more’s crime occurred), 96.9% of the people charged in state court with using crack in 1988 were black. In the same year, 79.6% of the people charged with using powder cocaine were white. State v. Russell, 477 N.W.2d 886, 887 n. 1 (Minn.1991).
The Federal Judicial Center released a report this year documenting racial disparity among offenders in the federal system. Federal Judicial Center, The General Effect of Mandatory Minimum Prison Terms 20-21 (1991). According to the study, in 1984 the average sentence for blacks in the federal system, after controlling for several offense and offender factors, was 28% higher than the average sentence for whites. In 1990, that disparity had risen to 49%. Id.
As the majority notes, the racial disparities created by the mandatory minimum sentences and the Guidelines are a “serious matter.” Although such disparities by themselves may not violate the Equal Protection Clause, they constitute a mitigating factor which has surfaced since the drafting of the drug offense Guidelines by the Commission and on which the Commission has neither considered nor taken action.
Thus, because the Sentencing Commission skewed the Guidelines by overlooking Congress’ minimum sentence and further because the Sentencing Commission never considered the racial disparity resulting from crack Guidelines, the district court possessed the authority to depart downward from the Guidelines, but not below the mandatory minimum of sixty months plus twelve months for the weapon possession.
The majority disregards Judge Rosen-baum’s decision, resting on sound grounds, to give a downward departure from the Guidelines. In my view, Judge Rosen-baum, an able and thoughtful district judge, should be commended for noting the Sentencing Commission’s error in setting guidelines above Congressional dictates, and in again calling attention in a judicial decision to the racially disparate impact of federal criminal sentencing in drug cases. He has followed a proper course and should be affirmed.