Court Opinion

ID: 9492060
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:31:12.13527+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:05.300010
License: Public Domain

COWEN, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part, and dissenting in part.
I join in all of the majority’s opinion except for Part III, which affirms the District Court’s denial of Paster’s motion for a downward departure based on aberrant behavior. Because the District Court’s refusal to depart on that ground was,predi*222cated on a misapprehension of the applicable legal standard for an aberrant behavior departure, I would remand for re-sentencing so that the District Court could reconsider the motion under the correct standard.
In United States v. Marcello, 13 F.3d 752 (3d Cir.1994), this court, consistent with every other circuit court to have considered the issue, recognized that the Guidelines permit a sentencing court to downwardly depart in a case where a defendant’s criminal conduct can fairly be characterized as a “single act[ ] of aberrant behavior.” Id. at 760 (quoting U.S.S.G. Ch. 1, Pt. A, intro, comment ¶4®). The courts of appeal are not in agreement, however, as to the correct definition of aberrant behavior. A minority of circuits have adopted a “totality of the circumstances test” that, as its name implies, allows a sentencing court to consider a multitude of factors, including a defendant’s lack of a criminal record and his prior good deeds, in assessing whether a downward departure for aberrant behavior is appropriate. See Zecevic v. United States Parole Commission, 163 F.3d 731, 734-35 (2d Cir.1998); United States v. Grandmaison, 77 F.3d 555, 564 (1st Cir.1996).1 Under the totality test, as explained by its proponents, “ ‘when all is said and done, the conduct in question must truly be a short-lived departure from an otherwise lawabiding life.’ ” Id. at 735 (quoting United States v. Colace, 126 F.3d 1229, 1231 (9th Cir.1997)).
We considered and rejected the totality approach in Marcello. We reasoned that a defendant’s criminal history, or lack thereof, is already incorporated into the Guidelines’ sentencing formula, and that it would be inappropriate to factor it in once again under the guise of aberrant behavior. Marcello, 13 F.3d at 761.2 Instead, we adopted the majority view, first articulated by the Seventh Circuit in United States v. Carey, 895 F.2d 318, 325 (7th Cir.1990), which focuses the aberrant behavior inquiry on the criminal conduct itself, not on a defendant’s “high standing in the community and his lack of prior conviction.” Carey, 895 F.2d at 324. Under this approach, a sentencing court considering an aberrant behavior departure must decide whether a defendant’s criminal behavior was “ ‘a spontaneous and seemingly thoughtless act rather than one which was the result of substantial planning.’ ” Marcello, 13 F.3d at 761 (quoting Carey, 895 F.2d at 325). The reason for focusing on whether a defendant’s criminal act is spontaneous and unplanned is that “ ‘an act which occurs suddenly and is not the result of a continued reflective process is one for which the defendant may be arguably less accountable.’ ” Id. Applying this standard in Mar-cello, we affirmed the district court’s conclusion that the defendant, who over a one-week period structured bank deposits to evade currency transaction reporting requirements, was not entitled to an aberrant behavior departure because some pre-planning was required to commit the offense. Id. Similarly, in Carey, the Seventh Circuit held that an aberrant behavior departure was not allowed where the defendant had engaged in a check-kiting scheme over a fifteen-month period. 895 F.2d at 34-35. See also United States v. Glick, *223946 F.2d 335 (4th Cir.1991) (no aberrant behavior departure where defendant sent five separate letters containing misappropriated information over the course of ten weeks); United States v. Garlich, 951 F.2d 161 (8th Cir.1991) (no aberrant behavior where defendant planned and executed a fraudulent financing scheme over a one-year period).
In stark contrast to those cases, all of which involved offenses that had been planned for days, weeks or even months, in this case the District Court found as a matter of fact that “[u]p until a few minutes prior to the stabbing, Paster had no plan to Mil his wife.” Paster, 17 F.Supp.2d 345, 348 (M.D.Pa.1998). The court also noted that “there are indications that the murder was spontaneous.” Id. at 351. Despite these findings, however, the District Court concluded that it did not have the authority to depart for aberrant behavior. The court explained:
The murder was not committed in a thoughtless manner. Thoughtlessness is an essential element under Marcello, Thoughtfulness [sic] is missing in this case. Paster had ample time in the minutes preceding the stabbing to think about whether to murder his wife. Further, the number of times Paster stabbed his wife indicates that he thought about the act as it was being done. There is no authority to depart on the basis of aberrant behavior under Marcello. We will deny Paster’s request for a departure on the basis of aberrant behavior.

Id.

The problem with this reasoning is that, under the District Court’s definition of the term “thoughtless,” a defendant who has any opportunity to consider his crime, no matter how fleetingly, would be ineligible for a departure based on aberrant behavior. Were this a correct statement of law, however, there would be no point in having an aberrant behavior departure in the first place because no defendant would ever qualify for it, save perhaps a hypothetical one concocted for a law school examination. In real life, those who commit crimes almost always have some opportunity, even if for only a minute or two, but typically much longer than that, to consider their actions. See Zecevic, 163 F.3d at 734 (“If actions taking place over such a short period can be deemed to include sufficient planning and preparation to remove them from the realm of the ‘spontaneous and thoughtless,’ this standard is limited indeed.”).
Consider, for instance, the defendant in United States v. Russell, 870 F.2d 18 (1st Cir.1989), a case which is often cited as an “excellent example” of aberrant behavior, particularly among those courts employing the “spontaneous and thoughtless” test. See, e.g., Carey, 895 F.2d at 325. The defendant was a Wells Fargo armored truck driver and his partner was the truck’s messenger. A bank mistakenly gave the pair an extra bag of money containing $80,000, which both men, yielding to temptation, decided to keep for themselves. A week later, however, Russell confessed the crime, returned the money that he had kept, and cooperated with authorities. Under the definition of “thoughtless” adopted by the District Court, Russell would have been ineligible for an aberrant behavior departure because he undoubtedly had some opportunity, though perhaps not very long, to contemplate whether or not to keep the bank’s money.
In my view, the “spontaneous and thoughtless” test does not require sentencing courts to literally determine whether a defendant, at any time prior to his offense, had time to think about his criminal conduct. The answer to that question will invariably be yes. Instead, the test asks more generally whether the defendant’s crime was the product of planning and deliberation or, as we stated in Marcello, “a continued reflective process.” 13 F.3d at 761 (quoting Carey, 895 F.2d at 325). If it was, then an aberrant behavior departure will be unavailable. If it was not, a *224district court should retain the discretion to depart. See United States v. Winters, 105 F.3d 200 (5th Cir.1997) (noting that “one isolated assault” could be considered aberrant behavior, but not a subsequent effort to conceal the offense by coercing a witness to give false testimony). Applying that test to the facts of this case — where the defendant did not plan the murder, the entire episode took place over the course of no more than a few minutes, and the defendant confessed to the crime within minutes of its commission and made no attempt to conceal his culpability — I would hold that the Distinct Court had the discretion to depart based on aberrant behavior, and that the District Court’s conclusion that it had “no authority” to award the departure was an error of law necessitating a remand.3
The majority endorses the District Court’s holding that Paster is not eligible for an aberrant behavior departure because he did not act in a “thoughtless” manner. In particular, the majority relies on the District Court’s observations that Paster had time in the minutes preceding the murder to think about his actions, and that Paster stabbed his wife so many times that he must have been thinking about the murder while he was committing it. Maj. Op. at 212-13. In my view, neither of these reasons support the conclusion that Paster did not act “thoughtlessly.” As to the latter, if a defendant who is conscious of his actions during the commission of a crime is deemed not to have acted aber-rantly, then the departure will only be available to that minuscule class of defendants who are liable for crimes committed by involuntary reflex, and perhaps also to those who are in a hypnotic state at the time of their offense. Surely this is not what the Sentencing Commission or the Marcello panel intended when they recognized that “single acts of aberrant behavior” may justify a downward departure. U.S.S.G. Ch. 1, Pt. A, intro, comment ¶ 4(d). That Paster may or may not have thought about whether to murder his wife in the moments before the stabbing also should not be a sufficient basis to disqualify him for an aberrant behavior departure. The murder of Dr. Bostrom, while undoubtedly a brutal and heinous crime, was certainly not the product of any meaningful deliberation or reflection on the part of Paster; to the contrary, all indications are that Paster acted spontaneously and in response to a series of deeply painful revelations from his wife. Under these circumstances, the majority’s conclusion that Paster failed to act in a “thoughtless” fashion can only be justified by the most literal and wooden definition of that term.
None of this is to say, however, that an aberrant behavior departure was required in this case. Not every crime that is committed spontaneously and without pri- or planning merits a reduced sentence. If after analyzing the factual record, for example, the District Court concluded that the murder of Dr. Bostrom was the culmination of a longstanding pattern of domestic violence on the part of Paster, then a departure based on aberrant behavior would have obviously been inappropriate. A departure would have also been unwarranted if the District Court concluded that the lack oí' planning in this case was sufficiently accounted for by the base offense level for second-degree murder. U.S.S.G. § 2A1.2; see generally Koon v. United States, 518 U.S. 81, 95-96, 116 S.Ct. 2035, *225135 L.Ed.2d 392 (1996). But the District Court never reached these issues. It summarily concluded that it had “no authority” under Marcello to depart because Paster’s criminal act was not committed in a “thoughtless” manner. Because that conclusion was based on an erroneous and overly restrictive understanding of the legal standard governing an aberrant behavior departure, we should allow the District Court to reconsider this issue at re-sentencing.
Finally, I offer a brief comment concerning the District Court’s grant of a nine-level departure for extreme conduct, which nearly tripled the sentence that Paster received. Judge Oberdorfer has carefully identified the reasons why the structure of the Guidelines and the applicable case law render the magnitude of that departure unreasonable. I shall not repeat them here. I add only that at re-sentencing, for those same reasons, the District Court should not again impose a nine-level upward departure. While Judge Sloviter is of course coi’reet that the District Court’s decision to depart is entitled to great deference, it is equally true that:
A judge may not say: “I have decided to depart, so I now throw away the guidelines.” The guidelines are designed to bring openness and consistency to sentencing, to even out the effects of different judges’ perspectives on desert and deterrence.... Unless there is discipline in determining the amount of departure, however, sentencing disparity will reappear.
United States v. Ferra, 900 F.2d 1057, 1061-62 (7th Cir.1990) (citation omitted). In my view, the nine-level departure imposed in this case is emblematic of the very sentencing disparities that the Guidelines were designed to counter. It should not be repeated.

. The Zecevic court listed the following factors that courts have considered in applying totality of the circumstance test: “(1) the singular nature of the criminal act; (2) the defendant's criminal record; (3) psychological disorders form which the defendant was suffering at the time of the offense; (4) extreme pressures under which the defendant was operating; (5) letters from friends and family expressing shock at the defendant's behavior; and (6) the defendant's motivations in committing the crime.” 163 F.3d at 735.

. This conclusion has since been bolstered by the Supreme Court's recognition in Koon v. United States, 518 U.S. 81, 113, 116 S.Ct. 2035, 135 L.Ed.2d 392 (1996), that the Guidelines specifically prohibit a downward departure on the ground that a Criminal History Category I fails to reflect a particular defendant's low likelihood of recidivism.

. The majority asserts that the District Court’s statement that it had “no authority to depart on the basis of aberrant behavior under Mar-cello,” Paster, 17 F.Supp.2d at 351, did not really mean what it said (i.e., that the District Court thought it lacked discretion to grant Paster’s downward departure motion). Instead, the majority posits, the statement merely reflects the District Court's determination that "the facts of this case applied to the principles announced in Marcello do not qualify Paster for an aberrant behavior departure.’’ Maj. Op. at 214. I cannot agree. We must presume that the able and experienced District Judge meant precisely what he said in concluding that he had “no authority” to grant Paster’s downward departure motion. The majority’s effort to recast the District Court's decision as an exercise of discretion strains credulity.