Court Opinion

ID: 9499661
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:54:05.085512+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:38.665199
License: Public Domain

ROGERS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I dissent because it was substantively reasonable for the district court to sentence a defendant to six years in prison for contributing in a small way to the market for pictures of despicable and revolting crimes against children. While the sen-fence is not what my colleagues or I, or the United States Sentencing Commission, would have imposed, our duty under Booker is nonetheless to uphold the trial court’s sentence if it is reasonable.
The district court analyzed carefully and reasonably the § 3553(a) factors. The court especially focused on the first factor, “the nature and circumstances of the offense and the history and characteristics of the defendant.” 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(1). In evaluating the nature and circumstances of the offense, the district court discussed the fact that Borho “committed his offenses in the least ‘personally engaged’ way possible.” One might reasonably question whether the fact that Borho did not engage in any “interactive” behavior with children should be grounds for a reduced sentence, because such behavior would have constituted a separate crime. See Maj. Op. at 911.1 But it is not necessarily unreasonable to take into account the absence of aggravating activity even if such aggravating activity might be separately criminal. Indeed, the Guidelines themselves enhance for related activity that is uncharged but may be criminal. See, e.g., U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1 (enhancement of firearm possession sentence for possession “in connection with another felony offense”); see also U.S.S.G. § 3A1.3 (enhancement for restraint of victim); § 3C1.1 (enhancement for obstruction of justice); § 3C1.2 (enhancement for reckless endangerment during flight); United States v. Comer, 93 F.3d 1271, 1284 (6th *917Cir.1996) (sentencing court may consider acquitted conduct or uncharged criminal conduct); United States v. Aideyan, 11 F.3d 74, 76 (6th Cir.1993) (“A sentencing court may consider prior criminal conduct, whether or not charged.”)- It is correspondingly reasonable under § 3553 to give a lesser sentence where related criminal activity is not present.
The district court also took into account Borho’s background as a decorated war veteran with a long and stable employment history and the absence of any prior criminal history. The court placed great weight on the life circumstances that contributed to Borho’s commission of this crime. In particular, the court credited expert testimony concerning Borho’s “addiction” to pornography, which began only very late in his life, was a result of major depression and diabetes, and was not accompanied by any other sexual addition.
The district court also considered “the kinds of sentence and the sentencing range” applicable to this crime. 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(4). The court reasoned that the statute establishes a five-year minimum sentence, thereby indicating that Congress believed that five years was a sufficient sentence for at least some offenders. The district court noted the need to “avoid unwarranted sentence disparities,” 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(6), observing that, in the district court’s judgment, the “circumstances of the offenses and the characteristics of the defendant” in this case were at “the lowest end” of these kind of cases. Thus, the district court reasoned that to enter a sentence within the recommended Guidelines range, which was near the statutory maximum in this case, would leave little room to impose more severe sentences for more egregious defendants in the future. The district court also considered the absence of any need “to protect the public from further crimes of the defendant,” 18 U.S.C. § 3 553(a)(2)(C), based on expert testimony that Borho was “very unlikely to seek out interpersonal expression of any sexual fantasy.”
Finally, the district court considered the presence of sadistic images and the large number of images on Borho’s computer. Taking account of these aggravating factors, the district court determined that Borho was not “the least culpable of all defendants convicted of violating these statutes,” and was therefore not entitled to the statutory minimum.
To be sure, my colleagues and I, and the Sentencing Commission, would impose a different reasonable sentence. But I cannot conclude that the district court’s sentence was not reasonable. Very different sentences can be reasonable, because different factors that go into sentencing can be weighed differently. There exists no Platonic form of the most perfectly reasonable sentence for a particular crime. Reasonable minds can come to very different conclusions as to how much punishment is warranted for a particular criminal act. This contrasts with determinations of fact, and also contrasts with determinations of law such as whether the elements of a crime have been met. Fact finders are at pains to ascertain the one true set of facts that everyone assumes exists. Similarly when courts ascertain the content of the elements of a crime, the underlying assumption is that certain activity is either criminal or it is not; it cannot be both.
Thus when Congress provides a range of punishments for a particular crime, there is no such thing as the “ideal” punishment that decision makers are trying to approach in determining the sentence. The factors that Congress requires us to consider can simply be weighed differently— actually very differently — by different reasonable people.
*918Under the pre-Guidelines system, sentencing judges made the sentencing determination, often based on judge-found facts, resulting in sentencing that may have been reasonable when viewed individually, but which might be very different from sentences given by other judges. The perceived disparity in such a system led to the Guidelines. Under the pr e-Booker Guidelines system, Congress provided that the sentencing determination within the statutory range would be largely made by the Sentencing Commission, with only sharply curtailed discretion left to sentencing judges. Thus, for consistency purposes, Congress took the power to determine what was a reasonable sentence (within the statutory range) from individual sentencing judges and gave it to the Sentencing Commission.
In Booker, the Supreme Court invalidated the pr e-Booker Guidelines system based on the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. Because the pre-Guidelines system— including sentencing based on judge-found facts — unquestionably complied with the Sixth Amendment, and because Congress unquestionably has the power to confine sentencing discretion if it wants to, invalidation of the Guidelines system required that some aspect of the pre-Guidelines system, not present in the Guidelines system, be deemed to have been necessary to the constitutionality of the pre-Guidelines system. That aspect was the power of individual sentencing judges, rather than Congress through the Sentencing Commission, to determine the reasonableness of sentences within statutory ranges.
There can be no blinking what the Supreme Court did in Booker. It took away the power of the Sentencing Commission to determine the reasonableness of sentences within the statutory range, and gave it to the district judges. It is neither appropriate nor advisable for the lower appellate courts now — without Supreme Court direction — to try to restore partially the power of the Sentencing Commission at the expense of sentencing court discretion. The genie cannot so easily be put back in the bottle.
Yet that is what we are attempting if we say that a sentence is less reasonable the farther it gets from the Guidelines range. It is true that we properly review sentences for reasonableness, and that sentencing courts must consider a properly calculated advisory Guidelines range. But it cannot be that a sentence is unreasonable purely because of the degree that it varies from the Guidelines range. Such a principle conflicts too directly with what the Supreme Court has told us: sentencing courts determine a reasonable sentence, not the Sentencing Commission. While this court in Davis relied in part on the distance between the imposed sentence and the Guideline range, we did not rely entirely on that distance. A significant factor in Davis was the fact that the one-day sentence in that case left “no room to make reasoned distinctions between Davis’s variance and the variances that other, more worthy defendants may deserve.” United States v. Davis, 458 F.3d 491, 499 (6th Cir.2006). Here the district court expressly addressed this concern when it found that Borho was not the “least culpable” of defendants and imposed a sentence that was a full year above the statutory minimum, thus leaving room for meaningful distinctions for less culpable defendants in the future.
The district court expressly based its decision not to impose the statutory minimum sentence in this case on the fact that Borho possessed “sadistic” images and on the “number of images” on Borho’s computer. The district court thus did not find those two enhancements “to be of no help in distinguishing among offenders and thus *919inapplicable in determining an appropriate sentence.” Maj. Op. at 911. The district court did state that the enhancement for “sadistic” images is “not particularly helpful in distinguishing between offenders” because “sex between adults and children is inherently sadistic” and that the enhancement for the “ ‘number of images’ has become a considerably less useful factor in distinguishing between offenders.” The difference between the majority’s characterization of the district court’s reasoning and the actual statements may be subtle, but it is significant in light of this court’s recent holding in United States v. Funk, 477 F.3d 421 (6th Cir.2007), which required reversal where the district court’s decision was based on an “impermissible” policy disagreement with the Guidelines. Rather than sentencing Borho as if the “enhancement were not there,” as did the district court in Funk, 477 F.3d at 425, the district court here increased Borho’s sentence based on the Guidelines enhancements but concluded that the length of the sentence enhancements recommended by the Guidelines overstated the nature of Borho’s individual actions. This kind of individualized consideration of aggravating factors is clearly consistent with the mandate of Booker.
Apart from the distance between the sentence imposed and the advisory Guidelines range, it simply cannot be said that the sentence imposed by the district court in this case was in any way unreasonable. It was not only procedurally reasonable as recognized by the majority, but also substantively reasonable in every respect, with the only arguable exception being its distance below what the Sentencing Commission would impose. The seventeen-year minimum that the Sentencing Commission would require is certainly reasonable given the heinous nature of the depicted child pornography. On the other hand, for the reasons carefully set out by the district court, six years is also reasonable. Under Booker, the district court and not the Sentencing Commission gets to make the call.

. The majority reads the district court’s reference to "interactive behavior such as phone sex, e-mail sex, and so on” to refer to the absence of any such interactive activity with children, which would constitute a separate crime. However, Borho suggests that this reference was to the absence of any such interactive activity at all, even with other adults, which would not constitute a separate crime. Borho’s brief argues that the absence of such interactive conduct with other adults is relevant to Borho’s sentence because experts have found that “the ’body of legitimizing stories' fostered by interaction among users is a key component in the perpetuation and growth of child pornography.” When the district court’s comments are read in this light, the majority’s objection to this aspect of the district court’s reasoning is largely inap-posite.