Court Opinion

ID: 9481104
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:07:48.469419+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:05.697789
License: Public Domain

KOZINSKI, Circuit Judge,
dissenting in No. 89-10255:
I
Congress has provided that a district court may not depart downward from the range established by the Guidelines “unless ... there exists [a] mitigating circumstance." 18 U.S.C. § 3553(b) (emphasis added). The majority concedes that “here there are no mitigating circumstances,” maj. op. at 567 (emphasis added), but nevertheless approves a downward departure.
The majority’s candor is to be commended but its jurisprudence is not. Nowhere is it written that a court must apply statutory language except in “highly unusual” circumstances; no principle of law gives a court the power to discard a limitation Congress saw fit to write into the statute. Aphorisms about the advantages of experience over logic — plucked from Justice Holmes’ description of the common law— cannot justify defiance of a clear statutory command.
What the majority has done here does comport with a type of rough-and-ready frontier justice and may not seem terribly significant. But the implications of the decision are quite profound. Countless factors might make a particular case appear “highly unusual,” calling for a departure — downward or up. For example, the case might have gotten a good deal of publicity exposing the defendant and his family to much abuse; or the defendant might be a public official and the conviction might cost him his job in addition to a criminal sanction; or the defendant might already be in prison on state charges and a long federal sentence might seem like useless piling on. The possibilities are as diverse as human experience, each case vying for our attention as the one where the facts are so “highly unusual” as to justify departure. But Congress has made all of these “highly unusual” circumstances irrelevant unless they also happen to be mitigating or aggravating circumstances.
By dispensing with the threshold inquiry, the majority not only ignores an express congressional command but also strikes a serious blow at the philosophical base on which the Guidelines are founded — the notion of individual culpability. Here the majority allows a downward departure based not on what defendant did or refrained from doing, nor on the extent of harm caused by his criminal activity, nor on his diminished mental capacity or state of duress; in short, not on anything having to do with the defendant at all. Instead, the departure is based on what happened to the defendant’s colleagues-in-crime. But would such a circumstance also be a proper basis for departing upward, on the theory that, if the circumstances are “highly unusual” enough, the statutory limitation on upward departures (that the circumstances *569must be of an aggravating nature) can be dispensed with? Any such idea defies accepted notions of justice and fair play. Is the ease any different because the pinching shoe is on the prosecutor’s foot?
When courts take it upon themselves to improve upon statutory language, they often buy themselves a lot of trouble that may not be immediately obvious. Here the trouble will not be long in coming. I predict that Ray will quietly breed its own jurisprudence, calling upon us to determine what kinds of circumstances are “highly unusual” enough to emancipate us from statutory strictures. For the benefit of members of the bar who might try and guess how I will exercise this discretion, let the record reflect that I wear a 9V2 wide.
II
My colleagues err a second time. To be a permissible basis for departure, the circumstance must also be one that was “not adequately taken into consideration by the Sentencing Commission.” 18 U.S.C. § 3553(b). The majority creates a conflict within our circuit by failing to recognize that the Sentencing Commission adequately considered equalizing sentences among co-defendants. In United States v. Enriquez-Munoz, 906 F.2d 1356 (9th Cir.1990), we addressed whether a district court could depart upward to equalize the defendant’s sentence with those of his co-perpetrators and we said no: “Equalization is not a factor specified in the Guidelines [as a basis for departure], nor is it one we can say was overlooked.” Id. at 1359. The only difference between Enriquez-Munoz and this case is that the district court there departed upward, whereas the district court here departed downward. Surely this can’t matter. Whether equalization is the type of factor that would permit the district court to depart from the Guidelines range must have precisely the same answer whether the district court goes up or down; any contrary conclusion renders “our resulting circuit law ... entirely incongruous.” United States v. Carpenter, 914 F.2d 1131, 1136 (9th Cir.1990).1
Ill
Perhaps the majority believes that this is not a very significant case, as the specific basis for the departure — a disparity caused by uncertainty surrounding the implementation of the Guidelines — will not be repeated. But the principles by which the departure here is upheld transcend that narrow issue. Our generosity today comes at the cost of ignoring the language of the Guidelines and the law of the circuit; it introduces into sentencing determinations the type of unguided flexibility that is likely to cause us many headaches in the future. I respectfully dissent.

. The Enriquez-Munoz panel purported to leave open the question we answer today. Enriquez-Munoz, 906 F.2d at 1360. As demonstrated, however, its reasoning speaks louder than its words.