Court Opinion

ID: 9439892
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 06:50:47.14463+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:26:40.266725
License: Public Domain

STAHL, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
While I agree with the majority’s result and with much of its reasoning, I cannot agree that the prosecution’s “reticence” at recommending the degree of departure should animate our review of the reasonableness of the district court’s departure decision.
We review the direction and degree of unguided departures for reasonableness. United States v. Diaz-Villafane, 874 F.2d 43, 49 (1st Cir.1989); see also 18 U.S.C. § 3742(e)(3). In determining whether a sentence is reasonable, we proceed with ‘“full awareness of, and respect for’ the sentencing court’s ‘superior “feel” for the case.’ ” United States v. Rivera, 994 F.2d 942, 950 (1st Cir.1993) (quoting Diaz-Villafane, 874 F.2d at 50). Accordingly, the standard of review “is quite deferential to the district judge.” United States v. Hernandez Coplin, 24 F.3d 312, 316 (1st Cir.1994). We have never informed our deference by what the prosecutor recommends, either for upward or downward departures.
The majority states that if the government fails to recommend a downward departure when invited to do so, “the government has an especially hard row to hoe in its effort to convince us that the district court displayed unreasonable generosity in shaping the departures,” Majority at 410, and that “the government’s silence in the face of the lower *415court’s timeous request for enlightenment concerning the appropriate extent of the departures affects our assessment of the departures’ reasonableness,” id. at 410. With this, the majority appears to adopt a waiver-like analysis, such that a prosecutor who fails to recommend an appropriate sentence risks a near-automatic affirmance of the district court’s sentence. I cannot agree that the government’s action, be it in the nature of waiver or otherwise, has anything to do with our review of the reasonableness of the sentence, for in assessing reasonableness, our focus is on the facts of the case, not on the recommendations made by counsel. Thus even if the government recommends a lesser departure than the court grants, that recommendation cannot be an appropriate basis for us to decide that the court’s ultimate decision fails the reasonableness test.
In my view, the majority requires the court and the prosecutor to engage in an empty exercise, for to avoid affecting appellate review, the government would routinely recommend very small downward departures, even though it believes no departure is warranted and even though such advice will not assist the court any more than the government’s true position that no departure is warranted. Unlike the majority’s example of a lawyer who moves unsuccessfully for judgment as a matter of law who must then suggest jury instructions to the court, see Majority at 410, the prosecutor who unsuccessfully argues against a decision to depart does not assist the court by then recommending a downward departure of one week. In the departure context, the government’s silence carries with it the implicit recommendation that no departure (and, therefore, at most a very small one) is appropriate. Thus the government’s argument that there is no legal authority to depart often conflates with its position that no departure is appropriate.
I fail to understand the application of the majority’s apparent rule in this case. The majority accuses the prosecutor of “stonewall[ing],” Majority at 410, and of “clinging stubbornly to his position that the court should not depart at all,” id. at 410. It,is true that the prosecutor did not believe that the court was entitled to consider multiple causes for the loss as a grounds for departing downward. In addition to making that legal argument, however, the prosecutor also argued that even if the court had legal authority to depart, the losses being used for sentencing purposes did not overstate the seriousness of the defendants’ offense. Thus the prosecutor, accepting that the district court had legal authority to depart downward, still argued that no departure was warranted. In accordance with that view, when invited to recommend an appropriate sentence, the prosecutor responded, “Your Honor, we believe that the sentencing guideline ranges that were calculated by the Probation Office were appropriate ones.... ” The district court, hardly pressing for more assistance, replied, “Oh, I understand. I understand.” The prosecutor went on, however, to rank the defendants in order of the government’s view of their culpability. I would not characterize the prosecutor as having “stonewall[ed].”
Thus, given the deference appropriate in reviewing departure decisions, and given the facts found by the district court, we cannot say that the district court acted unreasonably in departing downward to the extent it did in this case. This is so not because of any reticence showed by the government in failing to recommend appropriate sentences to the court, but rather because these departures, while significant, are nonetheless within the realm of reasonableness.17 The government’s “silence” on the amount of departure is irrelevant; and the deference accorded the district court is not affected by actions of the government.

. See Majority at 410-11 (discussing reasonableness in context of other departure cases).