Court Opinion

ID: 9439884
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 06:48:26.872513+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:40:56.250433
License: Public Domain

PETTINE, Senior District Judge,
concurring.
The demands and strictures of the United States Sentencing Guidelines (“the guidelines”), and the limits that the guidelines place upon federal district court judges, constrain me to write a separate opinion in this case. I find the logic of Judge Selya’s able opinion to be unassailable, and I must agree with him that “absent specific circumstances independently justifying a departure, a judge cannot sentence outside a properly computed sentencing range merely because he believes that the guidelines work too severe a sanction in a particular case.” Maj. op. at 203-204. Although I cannot argue with my colleague’s analysis of what the guidelines require, I find myself taking great exception to the mechanical sentencing that the guidelines force upon judges, and I find it painful to adhere to this impersonal and cold-blooded process.
In this case, the district court spontaneously departed downward based on the belief that, for this forty year old defendant, the twenty-seven year sentence required under the guideline range was tantamount to a life sentence. At the Sentencing Hearing, the court articulated its belief that “I just happen to think that this is not the kind of thing the sentencing commission may have had in mind.” Tr., 6/25/93 at 34. However, a review of the ease law has revealed no precedent teaching that the combination of age and a lengthy sentence, resulting in a de facto life sentence, supports a downward departure. As Judge Selya points out, the guidelines treat age as a discouraged offender characteristic for purposes of a downward departure, and the interrelationship between age and length of sentence has not been considered adequate justification for a downward departure. Furthermore, I have been unable to find any statutory language or *205legislative history that indicates that Congress or the United States Sentencing Guidelines Commission (“the Commission”) has ever considered this problem. Indeed, given the frequency with which the guidelines result in sentences of numerous decades, combined with the fact that forty year old defendants are not uncommon, logic would seem to dictate that the members of the Commission were unconcerned about de facto life sentences. In any case, given the dearth of documentation as to the state of mind of the Commissioners, the only conclusion that I can reasonably reach is that it is impossible to determine what, if anything, the Commission intended with regard to this issue.
Thus, I must reluctantly conclude that there is no way for me to dissent from the majority opinion in this case and still remain faithful to the ideal of intellectual honesty, an ideal which must always be controlling in any judicial opinion and which I have always treasured. Legal precedent that supports Judge Boyle’s downward departure is simply nonexistent. However, my careful and painstaking reflection over the consequences of the proper application of the guidelines in this ease, as well as my many experiences with the guidelines in the years since their enactment, leave me overwhelmingly convinced that, except for increased uniformity of sentences, the sentencing guidelines are a failed experiment.
With regard to the results of the application of the guidelines in this case, I wholeheartedly subscribe to Judge Boyle’s sentiment that a term of years amounting to a de facto life sentence reaches beyond that which is appropriate for crimes committed by the defendant in the instant case. As a like-minded judge articulated in a factually similar case, “The majority decision ignores what is truly obvious — •that the portion of a sentence which goes beyond the defendant’s lifespan can serve no retributive, deterrent, rehabilitative or any other proper function of a prison sentence.” United States v. Thornbrugh, 7 F.3d 1471, 1475 (10th Cir.1993) (Bright, J., dissenting).
As far as the guidelines in general are concerned, I believe that their greatest weakness lies in their mechanical nature. “A system that fails to consider the offender’s personal characteristics places too great an emphasis on the harm caused by the offender’s act and too little emphasis on circumstances that would serve to mitigate the punishment. The Commission should have realized that it is a person who stands before the bar to accept the punishment imposed by the court.” Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., The Death of Discretion? Reflecting on the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, 101 Harv.L.Rev. 1938, 1953 (1988).
Unfortunately, when trial judges depart from the guidelines, appellate courts are fettered in their review of the litigation. As in this ease, they have little or no choice but to react to such departure in a rigid fashion. In distinction to one commentator, I feel they are “[unable ] to balance the distant guidance of a bureaucracy against the detailed responsibility of the individual sentencer.” Daniel J. Freed, Federal Sentencing in the Wake of the Guidelines: Unacceptable Limits on the Discretion of Sentences, 101 Yale L.J. 1681, 1730 (1992). Furthermore, I find the authority given by the guidelines to United States Attorneys, enabling them to control the sentencing process, to be entirely inappropriate and an invasion of the historical role of judges as the final arbiters of justice. Incredibly, we now have the inflexible prosecu-torial mind which, all too often, caters to public passion, dictating sentencing parameters. “Discretionary decisions of Assistant U.S. Attorneys, both as to charges and as to factual allegations, can powerfully expand or limit the judge’s ambit for sentencing.” Id. at 1723.
I have struggled with this case and feel compelled to voice my feelings. My sense of justice and my twenty-eight years of experience as a district court judge sitting in criminal cases, preceded by five years as U.S. Attorney and thirteen years as a state prosecutor, all lead me to believe that Judge Boyle’s actions in this ease were absolutely correct. Judge Boyle acted as a judge, drawing upon his life experience and his judicial experiences, making his decision not simply by working the grid provided by the guidelines, but by balancing the impact of the law upon an individual human being, given *206that human being’s particularized circumstances, against the protection of society. He recognized the face behind the law. He declined to function merely as an automaton.
The mandates of the guidelines may have accomplished uniformity of sentencing but they have done so by tragically eroding the sacred function of a judge in the sentencing process. This sacred function is a most complex, difficult, nebulous and at times undefinable burden, and it must always be met in the context of the unique setting at hand.
In considering this case, I have very seriously thought about recusing myself from all future criminal cases. I have found this decision an excruciatingly difficult one to make, but I have chosen to continue to hear criminal cases. It is established that a judge’s view on the subject matter of litigation does not require recusal. Laird v. Tatum, 409 U.S. 824, 93 S.Ct. 7, 34 L.Ed.2d 50 (1972). The very nature of my criticism and reaction to this case is abundant recognition of my duty to follow the rules where there is no room for intellectually honest dissent. Furthermore, I believe passage of the pending Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1993 may seriously increase this court’s criminal caseload. When I took senior status twelve years ago at age seventy, I solemnly declared that I would carry a full caseload. When the time comes that I can no longer do so as vigorously and effectively as my younger esteemed colleagues, I will at that point end my judicial service. Thus, because my recusal would significantly burden my colleagues, and because I recognize the controlling nature of the guidelines even while I object to their substance, I choose to maintain a criminal docket.
With the foregoing statement, I offer no dissent to Judge Selya’s well written opinion.