Court Opinion

ID: 9489428
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:15:40.560042+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:31.764337
License: Public Domain

WALD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting from the denial of rehearing in banc.
I would grant the petition for rehearing in banc. The district court granted Amhru Dyce, a first offender drug courier (“mule”), a downward departure under, inter alia, § 5H1.6 of the Sentencing Guidelines, on the basis of her obligations to her two young children and infant. Instead of the Guidelines-prescribed five years imprisonment, the court sentenced appellant to five years of probation, two of which were to be served in a residential treatment program, followed by one year in a community correctional facility or halfway house. The panel disallowed the departure, finding “nothing to suggest that Dyce’s family circumstances were in any degree ‘extraordinary,’ ” United States v. Dyce, 78 F.3d at 610 (D.C.Cir.1996) [hereinafter “78 F.3d”], and it now reaffirms that decision in denying her petition for rehearing.
Section 5H1.6 of the Sentencing Guidelines, which provides that “[fjamily ties and responsibilities ... are not ordinarily relevant in determining whether a sentence should be outside the applicable guideline range,” U.S.S.G. § 5H1.6, p.s., has been interpreted by various courts of appeals as permitting a downward departure only when a defendant presents “extraordinary” family circumstances. The question of when family obligations rise to this level is an issue affecting tens of thousands of federal offenders and their families. More than half of all female prisoners and more than one-quarter of all male prisoners are earing for minor children at the time they enter prison. See Stephen J. Schulhofer, The Feminist Challenge in Criminal Law, 143 U. Pa. L.Rev. 2151, 2190 n.155 (1995) (citing Bureau of *1473JuSTICE STATISTICS, WOMEN IN PRISON 6 (1991)). Other prisoners have primary responsibility for the care of parents, siblings, spouses, or grandchildren. In these cases, the impact of imprisonment on a defendant’s family is profound; it imposes not just financial and emotional hardship, but in some cases, loss of children to foster care or even complete severance of parental rights. Many Guidelines commentators, with whom I agree, conclude that in light of the significant detriment experienced by children as a result of a parent’s incarceration, the Commission’s initial presumption against considering family ties is unwarranted, short-sighted, and unwise.1 Nonetheless, in this context, I acknowledge that the Guidelines presumptions, “warts and all,” govern our sentencing review. But how the trial and appellate courts apply § 5H1.6 to the varied family scenarios that come before them is still the subject of legitimate dialogue and solicitude among judges. That is the reason I would rehear this case in banc: to lay down for the circuit some standards and guidance in this difficult and wrenching area of the law.
As the panel admits, the question of what constitutes “extraordinary” circumstances justifying a departure from the Guidelines for family responsibilities “is admittedly a murky one.” 78 F.3d at 615. In reviewing § 5H1.6 departures, courts are asked (mistakenly, I believe) to undertake a “mission impossible” of identifying where the ephemeral line between “ordinary” and “extraordinary” lies in the tragic realm of family breakup and disruption of children’s lives.2 Obviously no bright-line rule is reasonable, or even feasible — for example, “single parent with two or more children and dependent parent,” or “single parent with young child and infant”; the variety of family structures, attachments, personalities, and track records in fulfilling responsibilities defies any such easy categorization. As a result, in order to accommodate competing needs for discretion and guidance, courts of appeals have in the main employed two strategies: granting significant deference to a district court’s decision of whether departure is warranted, and delineating some boundaries on the sentencing court’s authority to grant a departure. Regrettably, in my view at least, the panel opinion goes far enough afield from both goals to warrant rehearing by the full court.
On the deference front, the panel opinion itself acknowledges that “a district court’s determination that extraordinary family circumstances exist will be entitled to considerable respect on appeal.” 78 F.3d at 615 (citing cases). That is necessarily so because this decision
will amount to a judgment about whether the given circumstances, as seen from the district court’s unique vantage point, are usual or unusual, ordinary or not ordinary, and to what extent. A district court may well have a special competence in making *1474this kind of determination, because it may have a better ‘feel’ for the unique circumstances of the particular case before it.
United States v. Rivera, 994 F.2d 942, 951 (1st Cir.1993). Just last month, the Supreme Court validated this approach in Koon v. United States, directing appellate courts to review all departures granted by district courts only for an abuse of discretion:
[T]he text of [the statutory provision governing appellate review of Guidelines sentences] manifests an intent that district courts retain much of their traditional sentencing discretion_ A district court’s decision to depart from the Guidelines ... will in most cases be due substantial deference, for it embodies the traditional exercise of discretion by a sentencing court.... [T]he district court must make a refined assessment of the many facts bearing on the outcome, informed by its vantage point and day-to-day experience in criminal sentencing. Whether a given factor is present to a degree not adequately considered by the Commission, or whether a discouraged factor nonetheless justifies departure because it is present in some unusual or exceptional way, are matters determined in large part by comparison with the facts of other Guidelines cases. District courts have an institutional advantage over appellate courts in making these sorts of determinations, especially as they see so many more Guidelines eases than appellate courts do.
Koon v. United States, — U.S.-,- -, 116 S.Ct. 2035, 2046-47, 135 L.Ed.2d 392 (1996) (citations omitted). Here, I think the panel unduly encroaches upon the sentencing court’s discretion in redrawing the ordinary/extraordinary cut, and indeed in doing so, may have gotten some of the underlying facts of the case wrong.
The panel reversed the district court’s grant of a downward departure in part because it found the sentencing judge’s concern for the welfare of Amhru Dyce’s three children to be “ill-founded.” 78 F.3d at 616. Dyce, as the district court and panel both noted, is a single mother with three children. At the time the sentence was imposed in October of 1994, one of the children was three years old, one thirteen months, and the youngest only three months old. Sent. Order at 2, reprinted in App. D; Sent. Hr’g of June 20, 1994, at 3, 15, reprinted in App. F. During the course of the sentencing hearings, the district court repeatedly stated that if Dyce were incarcerated, she could not breast feed her youngest child. See Sent. Order at 2; Sent. Hr’g of Sept. 19, 1994 at 14, reprinted in App. G; Sent. Hr’g of Oct. 19, 1994, at 12, reprinted in App. H. The judge also expressed concern that all three children would receive inadequate care, perhaps even be sent to foster care. See Sent. Hr’g of June 20, 1994, at 4-14; Sent. Hr’g of Sept. 19, 1994, at 7, 9, 11. These considerations led the court to conclude that “extraordinary family circumstances are presented,” Sent. Order at 1-2, which in combination with several other grounds3 warranted a downward departure. The panel, however, disagreed with that assessment of Dyce’s circumstances, stating that “[t]he record ... confirms that the children could and would be cared for by members of her family.” 78 F.3d at 616.
The panel’s assertion, however, is not so credibly rooted in the record. Although the government claimed at oral argument that Dyce’s family could assume responsibility for all three children, Dyce’s counsel disputed that statement. The record does indicate that at the time of the final sentencing hearing in October 1994, Dyce’s three-year-old son was living with his father, and her thirteen-month-old daughter had been sent abroad to live with Dyce’s mother and sister. Id.; see also Sent. Hr’g of Oct. 19,1994, at 4. No alternative care, however, had been identified for the three-month-old infant.4 In*1475deed, the reason the district court gave for its decision to sentence Dyce to a residential treatment facility for two years was so that the infant could remain with Dyce while she served her time. Sent. Hr’g of Oct. 19,1994, at 4, 12-14 (“[S]he should be with her baby.... I am going to sentence her to incarceration for 36 months to be as follows. I’m going to place her in this [residential] program for the first 24 months. Thereafter for 12 months, I’m going to place her in a community correction facility. Hopefully by the end of that first 24 months, the child will be in a situation that can be taken care of by the father.”). Thus it could be said that the panel not only invaded the district court’s discretion as to its overall assessment of Dyce’s family responsibilities, but it misread the record in the process since there was not firm evidence that Dyce’s family would, in fact, care for all three of appellant’s children 5 — an error I believe serious enough to warrant revisiting the panel’s reversal. The panel concluded that “[t]he unfortunate fact is that some mothers are criminals; and, like it or not, incarceration is our criminal justice system’s principal method of punishment.... While we will give due deference to a district court’s determination that the impact of that separation will be extraordinary, the record contradicts that district court’s finding that such would be the case here.” 78 F.3d at 617. The awful truth is that not only have two young children been denied any real opportunity to see their mother on a regular basis during their most formative years, but the baby may have fallen through the cracks altogether. Talmudic distinctions between ordinary and extraordinary suffering aside, this is a strange kind of jurisprudence for a family-oriented society. The panel’s conclusion, even if factually correct, is based entirely on a notion that so long as the extended family can provide economic care and physical custody, no further inquiry is necessary as to the import of separating the siblings from each other, as well as from their mother, without realistic possibility of even visitation. Even the constraining effect of the Guidelines does not prohibit consideration of these factors — all of which are central, I think, to a nuanced determination of whether family circumstances qualify as “extraordinary” or not.
In denying Dyee’s petition for rehearing, the panel now appears to soften its stance somewhat by declaring that while appellant’s family circumstances may not preclude a departure as a matter of law, the departure must be reversed because the district court did not make sufficient factual findings in support of its decision. See Amended Op., at 1471 (“In the present case, Dyce’s family in fact took care of her older children; and she offered no evidence that care will be unavailable for the infant. Thus, the district court’s finding of extraordinary circumstances has no basis in the record.”); Statement of Tatel, J., concurring in denial of rehearing and rehearing en banc, at 1 (“the district court’s conclusions were unsupported by record evidence”). While I find the panel’s revised position an improvement over the initial opinion, I read Koon as cautioning us not to scrutinize a sentencing judge’s factfinding in this highly discretionary area in an unduly intrusive manner. Although the district court’s exploration of Dyce’s circumstances *1476during the sentencing hearings may have been less than meticulous and did include several references to the alleged advantages of maternal childcare (statements which, taken alone, would not warrant a departure), the record shows that the judge saw appellant on at least four separate occasions and engaged in repeated conversations with counsel for appellant and the government over the placement of the three children. Implicit in all of these exchanges was the assumption that neither Dyce’s family members nor the children’s father could care for the infant.6 The district court judge could perhaps be faulted for his failure to expressly ask the appellant, “Can anyone in your family care for your infant child if you are incarcerated?” or even more specifically, “Your mother and sister, residing in England, appear willing to care for your older daughter. Would they care for your infant? What about the baby’s father? He appears willing to care for the oldest child. Will he care for the infant, also?” Admittedly, such questions might have provided a fuller picture of what might befall appellant’s children if their mother were to be incarcerated for five years. But based on the uneontradicted information available to it, the district court clearly felt comfortable in concluding that Dyce had demonstrated the necessary degree of extraordinary circumstances to warrant a departure.7 In light of the Court’s recent instruction to recognize the “institutional advantage” of a district court in separating “ordinary” circumstances from “extraordinary,” I would give considerably more leeway than does the panel to the district court’s judgment on this point.
In addition to ensuring that our review of sentencing decisions does not trample the discretion accorded sentencing judges, I believe rehearing in banc is also merited to define for the district court some comprehensible parameters for departure under § 5H1.6. The cumulation of rulings by our sister circuits provides only suggestions, not a great deal of firm guidance. Nor do I think our trial judges can take much guidance from the panel opinion in this case. Several circuits have refused to sanction departures simply because incarceration will jeopardize the parental ties of a young child, where a relative is available to care for the children during the parent’s incarceration. See, e.g., United States v. Carr, 932 F.2d 67, 72 (1st Cir.1991) (no departure for co-defendant parents with 4-year-old son; grandmother will care for child); United States v. *1477Pozzy, 902 F.2d 133, 139 (1st Cir.1990) (no departure for pregnant defendant whose sister has offered to care for child); United States v. Brand, 907 F.2d 31, 32-33 (4th Cir.1990) (no departure even though defendant is sole custodial parent of two young children; defendant’s foster parents and mother-in-law will care for children during incarceration); United States v. Brown, 29 F.3d 953, 961 (5th Cir.1994) (no departure for defendant with two children under age five who are being cared for by great-grandmother). But other circuits have affirmed departures in circumstances markedly less compelling than this defendant’s. The First Circuit — though denying departures in several earlier cases cited by the panel involving dependent minor children — did permit a departure based on a showing of a strong relationship between a defendant and his lover’s son, even though the child’s mother had custody of her son. See United States v. Sclamo, 997 F.2d 970 (1st Cir.1993). In other cases, departures have been authorized on the grounds that the defendant has several young children, in many cases without discussion of whether other relatives can or will care for the children. See, e.g., Rivera, 994 F.2d at 952-54 (three children under six); United States v. Johnson, 964 F.2d 124, 128-30 (2d Cir.1992) (departure affirmed for defendant who provided sole support for three young children and infant); United States v. Alba, 933 F.2d 1117, 1122 (2d Cir.1991) (two children, living with disabled, dependent father and grandmother; no indication that defendant’s spouse cannot fulfill family responsibilities); United States v. Deigert, 916 F.2d 916, 918-19 (4th Cir.1990) (departure authorized on grounds that, inter alia, defendant was mother of several children and pregnant with another); United States v. Peña, 930 F.2d 1486, 1494-95 (10th Cir.1991) (single parent of infant and sole support of 16-year-old daughter and her infant). One circuit left open the possibility that a departure would be permissible based solely on defendant’s role as a “good father” to “three exemplary children.” United States v. Canoy, 38 F.3d 893, 907-08 (7th Cir.1994). Another circuit affirmed departures in two cases based on the “unusual mitigating circumstances of life on an Indian reservation.” United States v. One Star, 9 F.3d 60, 61 (8th Cir.1993); United States v. Big Crow, 898 F.2d 1326, 1330-32 (8th Cir.1990). Departure has also been authorized based on a father’s anguish at involving his son in a criminal enterprise, absent any showing that his incarceration would cause the family unit to disintegrate. United States v. Monaco, 23 F.3d 793, 800-02 (3d Cir.1994).
The precedent is admittedly conflicting, perhaps because the task assigned by the Guidelines is so frustrating and counterintui-tive — that is, where on the spectrum we should draw the line between “ordinary” and “extraordinary” family tragedies? But the fact remains that our trial judges must wrestle with the problem every day. It is for many of them the most agonizing part of the Guidelines they must work with, and we as a reviewing court owe them the benefit of our best efforts to define parameters under which they can strive to sentence fairly with the welfare of children as well as society in mind. The panel, after overruling the trial court’s best judgment here, has provided only a barebones, largely eonclusory justification for its reversal. It states laconically that “[i]n those eases that have approved departures based on extraordinary family responsibilities, defendants have made far more convincing showings of special hardships or needs than has Dyce.” 78 F.3d at 616; see also id. at 616 (“her [family circumstances] were demonstrably better r than those of many defendants who have been denied departures”). It dismisses appellant’s breast-feeding status as easily accommodated by a delay in her incarceration. The single clue it offers as to why Dyce’s circumstances do not rise to the “extraordinary” level is that her children (according to the panel, but not the record below) will “receivef ] the willing care of relatives” who are employed and thus presumed able to provide financial support for the children. 78 F.3d at 616, 617. We know nothing of who would actually take physical care of the children during the day (or night); it is apparently irrelevant that the children will be separated from one another as well as from their mother. If the panel is saying that any showing of relative’s care (even if well-founded) renders a defendant ineligible for a § 5H1.6 departure, I think *1478that cutoff mark excessively rigid and more restrictive than that employed by many other circuits. If it is saying this is an area where individualized facts are paramount, I fail to see why the trial court’s discretion should not prevail — at least in a case of three children under the age of 5 and a first-time, low-level drug offender (“mule”) parent. If it is saying that the district court must run through any potential source of alternative care imaginable before concluding that incarceration would jeopardize the welfare of a defendant’s children, I find that rule overly intrusive. If it is saying something else definitive, I cannot find it. In any event, I believe we are obliged to explain in more detail what criteria the district courts should henceforth rely upon in assessing requests for family responsibility departures, and in this particular case, we certainly should evaluate appellant’s request on the basis of an accurate reading of the record below. Accordingly, I would hear the case in banc.

. For an assessment of the Commission's stance on this issue, see, e.g., Phyllis J. Newton, et al., Gender, Individuality, and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, 8 Fed. Sent. Rep. 148, 151 (1995) (citing, inter alia, Eleanor Bush, Not Ordinarily Relevant? Considering the Defendant's Children at Sentencing, 54 Fed. Probation 15 (1990); Susan E. Ellingstat, Downward Departures Based on a Defendant’s Extraordinary Family Ties and Responsibilities, 76 Minn. L.Rev. 981 (1992)). It is well acknowledged that this facially neutral provision has a disparate impact on female offenders, who are far more likely than their male counterparts to be the sole caregivers of minor children at the time of incarceration. See, e.g., Julian Abele Cook, Jr., Gender and Sentencing: Family Responsibility and Dependent Relationship Factors, 8 Fed. Sent. Rep. 145, 145-46 (1995); John C. Coughenour, Separate and Unequal: Women in the Federal Criminal Justice System, 8 Fed. Sent. Rep. 142, 143 (1995); Kathleen Daly, Gender and Sentencing: What We Know and Don't Know From Empirical Research, 8 Fed. Sent. Rep. 163, 166-67 (1995); Myrna S. Raeder, Gender and Sentencing: Single Moms, Battered Women, and Other Sex-Based Anomalies in the Gender-Free World of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, 20 Pepp. L.Rev. 905 (1993); Schulhofer, The Feminist Challenge in Criminal Law, at 2189 (10.5% of female inmates, as compared with 1.7% of male inmates, have children who are assigned to foster care or an institutional placement during parent’s incarceration).

. As then-Chief Judge Breyer explained, “It may not be unusual, for example, to find that a convicted drug offender is a single mother with family responsibilities, but, at some point, the nature and magnitude of family responsibilities (many children? with handicaps? no money? no place for children to go?) may transform the 'ordinaiy' case of such circumstances into a case that is not at all ordinaiy.” United States v. Rivera, 994 F.2d 942, 948 (1st Cir.1993).

. The district court stated that its departure was based on a totality of circumstances: Dyce's extraordinary family circumstances, her lack of a criminal record or substance abuse history, her remorse and acceptance of responsibility, the aberrational nature of her conduct, and her ability to contribute to society. See Sent. Order at 2; 78 F.3d at 613.

. In the petition for rehearing, appellee addresses this issue as follows:
*1475The panel also states that the "record confirms that the children could and would he cared for by members of her family.” There was no indication, however, that this could be done if a five-year imprisonment sentence was imposed, especially with respect to the infant.
Appellee’s Pet. for Reh’g and Suggestion Reh’g In Banc at 4. In addition, at oral argument, counsel for appellee stated that
Of course, there's no indication of who could have cared for the infant, whether any of them were capable of caring for the infant at all ... bottle feeding on a daily basis, even converting from the breast-feeding to the bottle feeding.

. It is not even clear that Dyce’s family or the father of her children was caring for the oldest child at the time of oral argument. In an exchange at oral argument regarding the residential treatment facility where Dyce had been sent, counsel for appellee informed the court that "[Dyce's] son was able to join her as well. He was having some problems at home, so he’s been with her for the past four months as well in this project." Counsel does not explain whether the "son” he refers to here is the oldest child or the infant. Since the infant was scheduled to have remained with his mother for the duration of her stay at this facility, I presume that the son who "joined her" was the oldest — indicating that Dyce’s family was not able to care for this child, either, in her absence.

. At the first sentencing hearing, on June 20, 1994, the district court judge stated that his "aim here is to keep [appellant] with the kids," Sent. Hr’g of June 20, 1994, at 14, and suggested that she be permitted to serve her time in a facility where she could remain with her children, id. at 5. The government replied only that it did not have a position to take on behalf of the government, although later in the hearing counsel stated that he thought appellant's children might be better off living with their father (without discussing whether the father would or could care for the child) — the one occasion on which anyone present at the proceedings ever challenged the assumption that Dyce was the only available caregiver for her infant child. Id. at 5, 10-11. At the second hearing, the district court judge, noting that there were “three kids that have got to be taken care of,” Sent. Hr’g of Sept. 19, 1994, at 6, inquired at length as to various options which might permit appellant to remain with her children, even suggesting that she might be deported instead of incarcerated. He expressed particular concern about the infant: "The problem you have with small children is nobody really can take care of these kids.... What are our alternatives then? Take the kids away, put the kids in a foster home, a little baby like that? Can’t do that.... There's got to be something here, some kind of program that allows the mother to take care of the kids until they are at least able to fend for themselves.” Id. at 7, 9, 14. When the judge indicated his willingness at the final hearing to sentence appellant to a residential treatment facility, the government’s primary objection was that the program identified by appellant's counsel was designed for drug treatment — and Dyce did not have a substance abuse problem. See Sent. Hr’g of Oct. 19, 1994, at 7.

. In its sentencing order, the district court found that
The Defendant is a single mother with three children under the age of four years old, one of whom is three months old and is being breast fed by the Defendant. At this point in time, the infant is totally dependent on the Defendant for nourishment. While these family circumstances do not decrease the Defendant’s culpability for her crime, these family circumstances nevertheless play a role in the Court's consideration on sentencing. Causing the needless suffering of young, innocent children does not promote the ends of justice.
Sent. Order at 2.