Court Opinion

ID: 9491501
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:15:56.465082+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:46.345496
License: Public Domain

FERNANDEZ, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
As a prelude to what follows, I must confess that the intuitions of the district court judge and those of my colleagues seem sensible and correct. I can muster the temerity *1087to dissent only because I am convinced that those good intuitions have not been enshrined in the Guidelines.
I agree with Isaacson that, although she was trusted, she was not in a position of trust. We recognized that distinction in United States v. Oplinger, 150 F.3d 1061, 1068 (9th Cir.1998), where we stated that “[w]hether an individual is personally trusted is irrelevant to the § 3B1.3 analysis....”
There was nothing very special about Isaacson’s position with the bank. She was a part-time vault teller, that is all. The bank had systems in place to check on her performance. However, because the bank’s branch manager and operations officer trusted her, they did not require her to complete the security procedures that her employer, the bank, had instituted. As a result, she developed a simple scheme for peculating funds— the well known false wad. At the end of the day, she was required to place one hundred $20 bills in a “poly bag,” then seal the bag, date it, initial it, and obtain the initials of a second employee who had observed the process. Instead, she put one $20 bill on each side of a wad of $1 bills, which, of course, looked fine from the outside. She then did the sealing and initialling, and often .forged someone else’s initials also.
Her managers’ lack of enforcement of the bank’s rules allowed her to get away with that for a long time until, finally, her embez-zlements were accidentally discovered. The branch manager and the operations officer lost their jobs when that occurred because of their incompetence in not enforcing the protective rules which surrounded Isaacson’s relatively lowly position with the bank.
In creating the Guidelines, the Sentencing Commission no doubt perceived that a person who violates a trust may well do serious damage to the ties that bind us together in this complex society and may, therefore, be more reprehensible than, say, a pickpocket or a sneak thief. However, when it eschewed a more direct and broader statement of that perception — for example, “a defendant in whom trust is reposed” — for the more narrow “abused a position of ... trust,” it had to explain that locution. It set out to do so, but it still fell short of making its pronouncement pellucid when it stated:
“Public or private trust” refers to a position of public or private trust characterized by professional or managerial discretion (■ie., substantial discretionary judgment that is ordinarily given considerable deference). Persons holding such positions ordinarily are subject to significantly less supervision than employees whose responsibilities are primarily non-discretionary in nature.
USSG § 3B1.3, comment, (n.l). That definition, with all of its modifiers, called for something more, so the Commission propounded a few examples. It.said that the adjustment would apply to “embezzlement of a client’s funds by an attorney serving as a guardian,” or. “a bank executive’s fraudulent loan scheme,” or “criminal sexual abuse of a patient by a physician under the guise of an examination.” Id. However, said the Commission, it “would not apply in the case of an embezzlement or theft by an ordinary bank teller_” Id. Having thus delivered itself of those elucidations, it left the matter to the courts, which have taken up the assignment in a multitude of cases1 as they have attempted to wrap words around what started out as a simple kernel of insight about culpability.
Our leading casé on the subject adumbrated the considerations which must go into a decision. See United States v. Hill, 915 F.2d 502 (9th Cir.1990). In that case, some families, which were moving from this country to Germany, allowed Hill to pick up their personal possessions and household goods so that those could be transported to a seaport from which they would be shipped abroad. Id. at 504. Hill picked them up all right, but on the way to the seaport he opened the boxes of goods, stole some, and destroyed others. Id. When caught and sentenced, he was awarded a 2 point upward adjustment for breach of a position of trust, and he appealed. We declared:
*1088[T]he primary trait that distinguishes a person in a position of trust from one who is not is the extent to which the position provides the freedom to commit a difficult-to-deteet wrong. If a person is in a relationship such that any attempt by a defendant to abuse the relationship could be simply or readily noticed by the second party to the relationship, presumably the two persons have not formed a “trust” relationship. Conversely, if one party is able to take criminal advantage of the relationship without fear of ready or quick notice by the second party, the second party has clearly placed a level of trust in the first.
Id. at 506. We went on to explain further that those reflections gave rise to two indicia of a position of trust. One was the “inability of the [victim] objectively and expediently to determine the [defendant’s] honesty.” Id. The other was “the ease with which the [defendant’s] activities can be observed.” Id.
Those comments did help. However, despite Hill’s clarification of the guideline provisions, difficulties do remain. That has been demonstrated in our postal service cases. Of course, we all trust that the mail will not be pilfered by postal employees, and because nobody can be watched at all times, every postal worker must be trusted to some extent. But to what extent? There the inevitable line drawing begins.
In United States v. Ajiboye, 961 F.2d 892 (9th Cir.1992), we dealt with the theft of mail by a postal worker who took the mail that he was supposed to deliver. Id. at 893. He appealed the award of the two level upward adjustment for abuse of a position of trust. We affirmed and said:
[I]t is evident that a postal carrier who delivers ordinary mail is in a position of trust_ The Postal Service places ... faith in those it hires to carry and deliver the mail. The Service does not routinely spy or check up on its carriers as they swiftly complete their appointed rounds.... Instead, it trusts carriers to resist the temptation to appropriate the contents of items of mail for themselves. Unlike the bank teller who is dutifully watched over by supervisors and who must account for all transactions at the end of the day, the postal carrier is free from surveillance when delivering mail and does not account in any way for particular pieces of ordinary mail.
Id. at 895. On the other hand, in Cuff, 999 F.2d at 1397, a postal worker was employed “to unload mail at a post office loading dock.” He, too, appealed the award of a two level upward adjustment for abuse of a position of trust. We reversed and said:
[W]e fail to see any significant distinction between the bank teller who embezzles funds and Cuff, who stole mail packages while employed in unloading them and moving them into the workroom where other employees were located.... Although he was not under constant observation on the loading dock, and was permitted to load and to unload trucks by himself, postal inspectors can observe mail handlers at work on the dock from catwalks with concealed surveillance areas, and mirrors are placed in the work area to facilitate observation. These are not the trappings of a position of trust.
Id. at 1398.
These two cases nicely bracket the issue. Of course, nobody can be watched every second. But it is much easier to detect wrongdoing by some employees, and the detection systems in place are part of the determination of whether the employee has the “trappings of a position of trust.” Id.2 Further illumination can be sought in cases involving financial institution employees.
In United States v. Christiansen, 958 F.2d 285 (9th Cir.1992), we considered the case of a credit union branch manager, who embezzled funds from her employer. Id. at 286. She was responsible for supervising employees and for accounting for the branch’s cash *1089and negotiable instruments. Id. We upheld an enhancement because, as we said, “Her position as a branch representative not only allowed her access to large amounts of cash, but also made it possible for her to conceal the theft for an extended period of time. In other words, her position of trust facilitated her embezzlement in a manner not accounted for in the underlying offense.” Id. at 288. That does not define Isaacson because she decidedly was not a manager of a branch office. She was merely a part-time vault teller, who was subjected by her employer to a number of safeguards. Of course, the bank itself, rather than an on-site manager, was her employer. There is not a shred of evidence that the bank endowed her position with any special form of trust. Rather, from its standpoint as the victim of the offense, no significant trust was reposed in Isaacson. See United States v. Barnes, 125 F.3d 1287, 1292 (9th Cir.1997) (the nature of the position is to be considered from the standpoint of the victim). No doubt she was able to carry out and conceal her embezzlement, but in that respect she was much like the embezzler in United States v. Helton, 953 F.2d 867 (4th Cir.1992).
In Helton, an imprest fund cashier undertook the embezzlement of over $20,050. The district court did not impose the adjustment and the government appealed. It argued that she was in a position of trust because “her supervisor trusted her and did not audit the traveler’s check fund.” Id. at 869. That enabled her to peculate checks for almost a whole year before she was caught. Id. The Fourth Circuit affirmed and pointed out that “Helton’s superiors would have quickly detected the embezzlement had they not been, as the district court found, ‘inept,’ ‘sloppy,’ and ‘derelict in their duty.’ ” Id. at 869-70 (citations omitted). It went on to explain that “Helton obviously should have been closely supervised, but being subject to lax supervision alone does not convert one’s job into a ‘position of trust’ under section 3B1.3.” Id. at 870. That precisely describes Isaac-son’s relationship to the bank and to her superiors. The bank’s strictures' on her job made her simple crime easy to detect, and it was only the ineptitude of her superiors that allowed her to get away with it for so long. That ineptitude was insufficient to convert her “job into a ‘position of trust.’ ” Id. Were there any doubt, one need only consider the bank’s reaction to her superiors’ inaction; it relieved them of their jobs.
Nor does this analysis conflict with eases from other circuits, which have dealt with bank employees. In those cases, the employee’s position had some special accouterments which could be seen as conferring more trust upon its holder. See United States v. Gordon, 61 F.3d 263, 269 (4th Cir.1995) (employee’s position was one that gave her special access to bank security information, which she used to facilitate a robbery); United States v. Johnson, 4 F.3d 904, 916-17 (10th Cir.1993) (employee’s position as a vault teller gave her special knowledge, which helped her to plan a bank robbery); United States v. Craddock, 993 F.2d 338, 342-43 (3d Cir.1993) (employee’s position was one that gave him the ability to commit the crime while avoiding routine auditing);3 United States v. Brelsford, 982 F.2d 269, 272 (8th Cir.1992) (employee’s position was as a teller supervisor, with special duties and privileges). But see United States v. Ragland, 72 F.3d 500, 502-03 (6th Cir.1996) (employee’s position as customer service officer had no special discretion and was more like an ordinary bank teller); United States v. Jackson, 32 F.3d 1101, 1104-05 (7th Cir.1994) (employee’s position as money market clerk did not appear to be other than an ordinary bank teller, but case remanded for exact determination). Intuition supports a feeling that all bank employees who handle money should be in the same position as postal workers, and should always be subject to the adjustment. Perhaps the Commission’s restrictions on that intuition may seem a bit rebarbative. Nevertheless those restrictions exist, and as applied to this case they do not allow the two level upward adjustment for abuse of a position of trust.
The Guidelines have attempted to explicate the insight that people who violate a trust *1090placed in them often do more damage to the social fabric and are more culpable than those who steal outright. That insight was no doubt universally grasped by sentencing judges before the Guidelines were even contemplated. However, it has been limited and somewhat obfuscated by the Guidelines themselves. That, in turn, has led to a legion of cases in the Courts of Appeals over the two point outcome of the abuse-of-a-position-of-trust alchemy.
In this case, Isaacson was trusted by her managers, but was not placed in a position of trust by her employer. Her managers have suffered for their failure to apply the safeguards that the bank had devised for a person in Isaacson’s untrusted position. In fine, Isaacson was trusted by some, but was not in a position of trust.
Therefore, I most respectfully dissent.

. The provision has been considered in about 182 published cases in the Courts of Appeals alone.

. I recognize that, notwithstanding its other statements about this guideline, the Commission has also issued its ukase that "because of the special nature of the United States mail an adjustment for an abuse of a position of trust will apply to any employee of the U.S. Postal Service who engages in the theft ... of undelivered United States mail.” USSG § 3B1.3, comment, (n.l), as adopted November 1, 1993. That does not change the analytical approach set forth in our postal employee cases.

. Language in Craddock suggests that even an ordinary bank teller can be found to have breached his position of trust as a teller. See 993 F.2d at 343. If it is read that way, I simply disagree because that would be directly contrary to the Guidelines.