Court Opinion

ID: 9480120
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:38:59.052705+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:29.997979
License: Public Domain

WOLLMAN, Judge,
concurring in part; dissenting in part.
With the exception of its holding that the district court did not err in imposing a sentence below the Guidelines range, I concur fully in the majority opinion.
Although as an abstract matter I have no disagreement with the sentence imposed by the district court, I do not believe that the Guidelines authorize the downward departure. Guidelines § 5H1.10 unequivocally prohibits courts from conferring any relevance to race, national origin, and socio-ec-onomic status when sentencing. Nevertheless, the majority opinion finds Big Crow’s residence on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, as well as the Reservation’s unemployment rate and per capita income, to be appropriate mitigating circumstances for departure. The opinion explains this away in a footnote by pointing to a Senate Judiciary Committee report that says that the section 5H1.10 requirement of neutrality is not a requirement of blindness. The little that this statement tells us, however, is also irrelevant to our review of Guidelines application because 18 U.S.C. § 3553(b) excludes consideration of legislative history. That statute permits courts to consider only the sentencing guidelines, policy statements, and official commentary in determining whether the Sentencing Commis*1333sion adequately took a circumstance into consideration. Section 5H1.10 shows that the Sentencing Commission considered race, national origin and socio-economic status, but then chose to foreclose these factors as a basis for sentencing.
Likewise, as recognized in the majority opinion, sections 5H1.5 and 5H1.6 provide that employment record, family ties and responsibilities, and community ties are not ordinarily relevant in determining whether a sentence should be outside the Guidelines. Granted that Big Crow has apparently established an excellent reputation for maintaining steady employment, maintaining close community ties, and meeting his family obligations, what is there that distinguishes his situation from that of other defendants who can make the same showing? To ask this question is not to depreciate that what Big Crow has accomplished. Under the pre-Guidelines regime, the sentence imposed would not be subject to attack. As a practical matter, one wonders why the government attacks it here. There are some things that are better left alone, and Big Crow's sentence is one of them.
Congress made a policy decision — perhaps ill considered, perhaps not — when it created the Sentencing Commission and adopted as one of the goals of guidelines sentencing the elimination of what it perceived to be unwarranted disparity in sentencing. We should not approve departures that, however appealing they may be in their result, subvert both that goal and the spirit of the Guidelines.