Court Opinion

ID: 9495362
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:01:10.949373+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:58.862716
License: Public Domain

GREENBERG, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The majority rejects Milan’s argument that the district court erred when it applied a 3-level upward departure to his combined offense level rather than to the public corruption counts only. I, however, dissent on this point.
As the majority indicates, at sentencing the court trisected Milan’s convictions into distinct groups: Group One, involving Milan’s unlawful financial transactions concerning the loan from Rivera (counts 15, 16, and 17); Group Two, involving Milan’s crimes as a public official (counts 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, and 14); and Group Three, involving the staged burglary of Atlas Contracting Company and subsequent insurance fraud (counts 18 and 19).
The government moved for an upward departure on the grounds that Milan was involved in a systematic or pervasive corruption of a public office which caused a loss of confidence in government on the basis of Application Note 5 of the commentary to U.S.S.G. § 2C1.7,1 the guideline used to calculate the adjusted offense level for the Group Two crimes, which states:
Where the court finds that the defendant’s conduct was part of a systematic or pervasive corruption of a governmental function, process, or office that may cause a loss of public confidence in government, an upward departure may be warranted. See Chapter Five, Part K (Departures).
(emphasis in original). The court granted the motion, adding a 3-level upward departure to Milan’s combined offense level for a total base of 27 as follows:

Section 3D1.4 Units

Adjusted Offense Level for Group One: 23
Adjusted Offense Level for Group Two: 18
Adjusted Offense Level for Group Three: 11
Total Units 1-1/2
Greater Adjusted Offense Level 23
Increase in Offense Level 1
Section 2C1.7 Departure Increase 3
Total Offense Level 27
See PSR at 21-27. The total offense level when combined with a criminal history cat*298egory I, yielded a sentencing range of 70 to 87 months. The court then imposed an 87-month sentence.
As the majority indicates, Milan maintains that the district court should have applied the departure only to the Group Two adjusted offense level, the group encompassing Milan’s acts of public corruption to which the departure was applicable, before applying the multiple-grouping adjustments found in U.S.S.G. § 3D1.4. Applying the 3-level public corruption departure only to calculate the adjusted offense level of the public corruption charges would have yielded the following results:

Section SDl.Jt Units

Adjusted Offense Level for Group One: 23
Adjusted Offense Level for Group Two (with three-level section 2C1.7 departure applied): 21
Adjusted Offense Level for Group Three: 11
Total Units 2
Greater Adjusted Offense Level 23
Increase in Offense Level 2
Total Offense Level 25
The total offense level of 25 combined with a criminal history category I would have yielded a sentencing range of 57 to 71 months.
I believe that Milan’s approach is correct and thus I dissent on this point. As the majority sets forth, under U.S.S.G. § 1B1.1, the sequence for calculating a sentence is as follows: (a) determine the applicable guideline section for each offense from Chapter Two; (b) determine the base offense level and apply any appropriate “specific offense characteristics, cross references, and special instructions” contained in the particular guideline in Chapter Two; (c) apply the adjustments as appropriate related to victim, role, and obstruction of justice from Parts A, B, and C of Chapter Three; (d) repeat steps (a) through (c) for each count and adjust the offense level accordingly if there are multiple counts of conviction; (e) apply the adjustment as appropriate for the defendant’s acceptance of responsibility from Part E of Chapter Three; (f) determine the defendant’s criminal history category as specified in Part A of Chapter Four; (g) determine the guideline range in Part A of Chapter Five that corresponds to the offense level and criminal history category previously determined; (h) determine from Parts B through G of Chapter Five the sentencing requirements and options related to probation, imprisonment, supervision conditions, fines, and restitution; and, (i) “[rjefer to Parts H and K of Chapter Five, Specific Offender Characteristics and Departures, and to any other policy statements or commentary in the guidelines that might warrant consideration in imposing sentence.” U.S.S.G. § 1B1.1(a)-(i).
The government interprets section 1B1 as requiring a district court to apply any departures that do not qualify explicitly as “specific offense characteristics, cross references, and special instructions” (which are considered during step (b) in calculating the offense level) during the last step in the process and thus only after grouping and only to the combined, total offense level. Thus, goes the argument, inasmuch as the section 2C1.7, Application Note 5 departure for systematic or pervasive corruption is part of the “commentary in the guidelines” but not a “specific offense characteristic,” “cross reference,” or “special instruction,” the court may apply it only after completing the grouping calculations during step (i) listed above. The majority accepts the government’s approach.
I believe, however, that the government’s position is off the mark. To begin with, the text of the guidelines is more ambiguous than the government posits. Accepting arguendo the government’s ini*299tial premise that a section 2C1.7, Application Note 5 departure must be applied like a Chapter 5, Part K departure only during step (i) because it does not appear under any of the section 2C1.7 headings of “specific offense characteristic/’ “cross reference,” or “special instruction,”2 it does not follow logically that the court may apply the departure only to the final offense level. U.S.S.G. § 1B1.1(i) directs a court simply to “refer”3 to the Chapter 5, Part K departures and any other policy statements or guideline commentaries before settling on a final sentence. However, the guidelines do not dictate rigidly how or at what point in the process the departure is to be applied. In marked contrast, the section 1B1.1 Application Instructions very clearly instruct a court to “fajpply” any victim, role, and obstruction of justice adjustments during step (c) after calculating the base offense level4 and to “fajpply” any acceptance of responsibility adjustment during step (e) after applying the grouping rules to determine the total offense level.5 See United States v. McDowell, 888 F.2d 285, 293 (3rd Cir.1989) (“With respect to the adjustment for acceptance of responsibility, the Guidelines specify that this adjustment should be made only after the counts are combined”) (emphasis added). Plainly the court can “refer” to a provision of the guidelines at step (i) but nevertheless then “apply” the departure at an earlier step of its calculations.6
*300Furthermore, though it does not appear under the heading “specific offense characteristic,” “cross reference,” or “special instruction,” a departure for systematic or pervasive corruption of a government function is identified within the public corruption guideline itself, section 2C1.7, not within Chapter 5, Part K. Listed as an “Application Note” in the commentary, it expresses the position of the Sentencing Commission that a court, in aggravating circumstances such as those present here, may consider adjusting the sanctions (ie. increasing the offense level) specifically for corruption-related offense conduct that falls within the scope of Section 2C. That is to say, the placement of the public corruption departure within the Chapter 2 public corruption guideline itself rather than within the generic rubric of Chapter 5 strongly suggests that the Commission intended for the departure to be considered at the moment the court consults the section 2C1.7 guideline to calculate the offense level for pertinent crimes.7 A contrary reading, on the other hand, confounds a uniform, systematic reading of the guidelines by virtue of a consequently scattershot application, with some portions of a given guideline applied in computing the offense level and others applied at some later stage in the process.
The point I make is consistent with the Sentencing Commission’s contemplation of two distinct types of departures: those in which “the guidelines provide specific guidance for departure by analogy or by other numerical or non-numerical suggestions” and those catch-all departures that “remain unguided,” resting either upon “grounds referred to in Chapter Five, Part K (Departures) or on grounds not mentioned in the guidelines.” U.S.S.G., ch. 1, pt. A, 4(b). So-called “guided departures” — where a guideline or related commentary suggests that a departure may be warranted under certain specific circumstances considered by the Sentencing Commission8 — “are more akin to adjustments, such as those in Chapters Two and Three, which judges use to calculate the applicable Guidelines range, rather than a departure from the Guidelines range.” Michael S. Gelacak et al., Departures Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines: An Empirical and Jurisprudential Analysis, 81 Minn. L.Rev. 299, 315 (1996); see also Bruce M. Selya & Matthew R. Kipp, An Examination of Emerging Departure Jurisprudence Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, 67 Notre Dame L.Rev. 1, 11 (1991) (A “guided” departure involves “instances in which a guideline or related commentary suggests that under partieu-*301lar circumstances a departure is warranted”).
Moreover, the application of a section 2C1.7, Application Note 5 departure after completion of the grouping analysis lends itself to untenable outcomes. In this case, for instance, it resulted in the district court’s enhancing Milan’s punishment for crimes temporally and substantively unrelated to his abuse of public office. It created a sentencing anomaly whereby, simply by opting to try distinct charges together,9 the government was able to bootstrap a 8-level public corruption departure to the unconnected money laundering charge which drove the guideline range (an adjusted offense level of 23 as opposed to 18 for the corruption counts). Put differently, the court in essence enhanced the money laundering convictions (Group One), whose guideline range was calculated separately under Chapter 2, Section S, on the basis of an offense-specific departure contained in an unrelated section of the guidelines concerning public corruption. This methodology contravened an express design of the grouping rules to “limit the significance of the formal charging decision.” U.S.S.G. ch. 3, pt. D, Introductory Commentary. See also U.S.S.G. ch. 1, pt. A, 4(a) (“the Commission has written its rules for the treatment of multicount convictions with an eye toward eliminating unfair treatment that might flow from count manipulation”); U.S.S.G. ch. 1, pt. A, 3 (the Sentencing Guidelines promote horizontal uniformity in sentencing by requiring that similarly situated defendants are sentenced similarly).
In the closest case for comparison of which I am aware, United States v. Nguyen, 255 F.3d 1335, 1345 (11th Cir.2001), the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit confronted a similar issue with respect to applying a downward departure under U.S.S.G. § 2A1.1, Application Note 1, which provides that a departure may be warranted in a murder conviction where the defendant did not intentionally or knowingly cause death. In Nguyen, one of the defendants was convicted of multiple counts in a RICO conspiracy, including felony murder. At sentencing the district court calculated the offense level under section 2A1.1, departed downward 6 levels pursuant to Application Note 1, and then applied the grouping rules to determine the combined offense level. See Nguyen, 255 F.3d at 1344-45.
On appeal, the defendant advanced the government’s position in this case, namely that the district court first should have grouped the offenses and then applied the downward departure to the combined offense level. The court of appeals disagreed, holding that the section 2A1.1, Application Note 1 departure was to be considered in the aforementioned step (b) base offense level determination. See id. at 1345. In other words, the court implicitly concluded that a departure identified in the commentary to an offense guideline is comparable to “specific offense characteristics, cross references, and special instructions” for purposes of U.S.S.G. § 1B1.1(b), and thus properly is considered in determining the base offense level before grouping. While the majority indicates that Nguyen does not dissuade it from concluding that Milan’s argument is incorrect and notes that the Nguyen court addressed the issue in only a single paragraph, still the Nguyen ruling is clear and I see no escape from a conclusion that by reaching our result we *302are creating a conflict between two circuits. Of course, as the majority points out, the conflict reflects an apparent rift between the United States Attorneys’ offices in New Jersey and the Northern District of Georgia.10
Overall, I am satisfied that a section 2C1.7, Application Note 5 departure for systematic or pervasive corruption of a government function, like “specific offense characteristics, cross references, and special instructions,” may be applied to adjust only the base offense level of the specific, corruption-related offenses to which it applies. Thus, I believe that the district court erred when it applied the 3-level departure to a final combined offense level after applying the grouping methodology to multiple and disparate counts. Consequently, I dissent on this point.

. Entitled "Fraud Involving Deprivation of the Intangible Right to the Honest Services of Public Officials; Conspiracy to Defraud by Interference with Governmental Functions.”

. The government also emphasizes the fact that Application Note 5 expressly references "Chapter Five, Part K (Departures).” But, this could mean one of two things: either that an Application Note 5 departure is a type of Chapter 5, Part K departure or that it is analogous to one for purposes of the general policy considerations applicable to all departures. See United States v. Reyes, 239 F.3d 722, 746 (5th Cir.2001); see also The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (Columbia Law Review Ass’n et al. eds., 17th ed., The Harvard Law Review Ass'n 2000) at 22-23 (the signal "see” demonstrates that the cited authority "clearly supports the proposition,” drawing an "inferential step between the authority cited and the proposition it supports.” However, "see” does not reflect that "the proposition is ... directly stated by the cited authority” rather than merely following from it).

. Emphasis added.

. U.S.S.G. § 1B1.1(c) (emphasis added).

. U.S.S.G. § 1B1.1(e) (emphasis added).

. To the extent that I accept for purposes of argument that a sentencing court must consider a section 2C1.7, Application Note 5 departure during step (i), I am consistent with our precedents holding that steps (a) through (i) are applied in a strict sequential order. See, e.g., United States v. Johnson, 155 F.3d 682, 684 (3d Cir.1998); McDowell, 888 F.2d at 292-93. Thus, the court makes the necessary calculations under each step in order (choosing the guideline, determining the base offense level, applying adjustments, etc.) until arriving at the final step, step (i). At this point, the court considers (i.e. "refer[s] to”) the Specific Offender Characteristics and Departures of Chapter Five as well as any other policy statements or commentary in the guidelines before imposing sentence. Once the court makes that consultation, it literally fulfills step (i) in keeping with our sequential-order rule as well as fundamental canons of statutory interpretation. See, e.g., United States v. Wong, 3 F.3d 667, 670 (3d Cir.1993) ("As with statutory language, the plain and unambiguous language of the Sentencing Guidelines affords the best recourse for their proper interpretation.”). Under this approach, any course of action taken by the court after that consultation is not cabined by the sequential methodology of section IB 1.1. Certainly there can be no doubt that in concluding infra that a section 2C1.7, Application Note 5 departure is to be applied during step (b) as the functional equivalent of a “specific offense characteristic,” “cross reference,” and “special instruction,” I am not in conflict with our precedents. Moreover, one plausibly can argue that our precedents do not stand for the proposition that the entirety of the Sentencing Guideline Application Instructions are to be applied in the order in which they appear. Johnson actually stated only *300that subsections (a)-(g) provide a rigid sequence of steps. See 155 F.3d at 683-84. Likewise, McDowell held only that an adjustment for acceptance of responsibility under step (e) must be applied after the combined offense level has been calculated in order pursuant to steps (a)-(d). See 888 F.2d at 292-93. The cases simply do not address the question of whether the serial method of applying section IB 1.1 extends to step (i).

. In fact, Chapter 5 already provides for an analogous departure in circumstances where a “defendant’s conduct results in a significant disruption of a governmental function.” U.S.S.G. § 5K2.7. At first glance, the sweeping language of section 5K2.7 would seem to encompass the departure formulated in Application Note 5 of section 2C1.7. Yet, as even the government conceded at oral argument and as the majority acknowledges, the two departures are indeed distinct, a circumstance which I find indicative of the drafters' understanding that the more particularized section 2C1.7, Application Note 5 departure is to be applied only in tire context of the precise guideline in which the Sentencing Commission deliberately situated it.

. See, e.g., U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1, Application Note 15; U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1, Application Note 14; U.S.S.G. § 2G1.2, Application Note 12.

. Of course, the consolidated trial in itself resulted in an increased combined offense level under the grouping rules.

. I do not doubt, however, that sophisticated defense attorneys reading the opinions here and in Nguyen will conclude that the actual rule is “heads, the government wins, tails the defendant loses."