Court Opinion

ID: 9480784
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:58:03.667504+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:53.533565
License: Public Domain

FEINBERG, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur in the decision of the majority to affirm the conviction and remand the case to the district court for resentencing in accordance with the Sentencing Guidelines. I disagree, however, with one of the majority’s grounds for finding Chief Judge Brieant’s upward departure from the Guidelines improper as a matter of law— namely, that it is impermissible per se to consider a defendant’s status as a prominent holder of public office in deciding whether to depart from the Guidelines. Because I believe that such a rule is neither a necessary interpretation of the Guidelines nor sound public policy, I dissent on this issue.
I agree fully with the majority’s analysis of appellant’s first two claims concerning the propriety of introducing the tape-recording without producing Sacco as a witness and the district court’s calculation of the total offense level. My disagreement arises from the majority’s holding that the lower court erred as a matter of law in treating Barone’s status as a former judge as a basis for making an upward departure from the Guidelines. The majority apparently believes that the Sentencing Commission considered and rejected the view that the holding of public office may be taken into account in deciding whether to depart from the Guidelines. The majority’s view rests in part upon section 5H1.10 of the Guidelines, which unconditionally rejects reliance upon a defendant’s socio-economic status in sentencing. Alternatively, the majority assumes that the holding of public office may sometimes be taken into account, but only if it involves misuse or abuse of one’s special training or position in perpetrating the offense.
The majority thus appears to be endorsing the following rule: In making an upward departure a court may not take into account that a defendant is prominent in the community because the defendant holds (or held) public office, unless the office has been misused in connection with the crime. Assume, for example, that high public official A commits perjury before a grand jury or is guilty of tax evasion (and neither the perjury nor the tax evasion has anything to do with A’s official duties), and citizen B commits the same offenses but does not hold public office. As I understand the majority’s view, on this issue A and B are alike, that is, the sentencing court could never take A’s public position into account in deciding to depart upwardly in imposing sentence. I do not believe that such a rule is either commendable on its own merits or required by the Guidelines.
Indeed, it is far from clear that § 5H1.10 applies to these considerations at all. So-cio-economic status identifies one’s standing with respect to fellow citizens in light of a set of discrete social and economic factors. The idea here is roughly that, with respect to these factors, whether one is worse off or better off, privileged or underprivileged, rich or poor, should not be relevant in determining one’s sentence. The considerations invoked by the district court in Barone’s case, however, do not have anything to do with whether Barone is worse off or better off than his fellow citizens. The focus of those considerations is rather that Barone enjoyed a special position of public confidence and trust in the community by virtue of his role as a former elected judge and a lawyer, a public trust that he directly betrayed by committing the offenses of perjury and tax evasion. It is this that the district judge had in mind when he referred to “the duty which [Barone] owed to the community as a public official and a lawyer.” I see no persuasive reason why the district court should not be able to take this public harm into account.
*53I do not believe, then, that the majority is correct in assuming that the Sentencing Commission considered and rejected taking a defendant’s status as a prominent former (or present) public official into account in sentencing. Moreover, if the Commission did take such a factor into account, it is at least as plausible to regard it as covered by section 5H1.6 of the Guidelines, which specifically concerns family ties and responsibilities and community ties. It is important to note that this section does not unconditionally exclude consideration of community ties as a factor in sentencing, but holds only that they are “not ordinarily relevant.”
I should emphasize that I agree with the majority that the district court erred in justifying its upward departure by appealing to three other sections of the Guidelines, §§ 5K2.5, 5K2.7 and 5K2.14, which involve the assertion of a connection between the offense and disruption of a governmental function, damage to property or a threat to the public welfare. I therefore concur in remanding the case for resen-tencing in accordance with the Guidelines. However, for the reasons set forth above, I would allow the district judge in the course of that resentencing to take into account Barone’s status as a prominent member of the community because of the office he formerly held. I do not suggest that an upward departure for that reason is called for. I suggest only that Judge Brieant is not prohibited from so exercising the significant discretion that the district judges still have under the Guidelines. See United States v. Correa-Vargas, 860 F.2d 35, 37 (2d Cir.1988).