Court Opinion

ID: 9481773
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:31:32.564718+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:34.340942
License: Public Domain

ELLIS, District Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent from Section IV of the majority’s opinion. My reasons for doing so are set forth in my opinion in United States v. Saunders, 743 F.Supp. 444 (E.D. Va.1990).
In essence, I cannot accept the majority’s holding that district courts may depart downward where they conclude that career offender status “exaggerates the defendant’s prior offenses.” Ante, at 951. This holding, in my view, contravenes a categorical Congressional command that finds accurate expression in the Sentencing Commission’s guidelines. Thus, in 28 U.S.C. § 994(h), Congress directed that the Commission “shall assure” that the guidelines for career offenders “specify a sentence to a term of imprisonment at or near the maximum term authorized_” Complying with this directive, the Commission promulgated § 4B1.1, which requires that “[a] career offenders’ criminal history category in every case shall be Category VI.” (Emphasis added.) This mandatory provision overrides the flexibility otherwise accorded sentencing judges in U.S.S.G. § 4A1.3 to depart from the guidelines where a defendant’s criminal history under-represents or over-represents his or her past conduct. Significant, too, is that U.S. S.G. § 4A1.3 makes no mention of the career offender category.
In sum, I would affirm the district court in this case because I conclude that sentencing judges have no authority to depart downward from the career offender guideline on the ground that the seriousness of defendant’s past conduct is overstated. Giving sentencing judges this authority might well be sound public policy, but Congress, which alone has the power to grant this authority, has not yet done so.