Court Opinion

ID: 9499706
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:55:48.706714+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:40.821740
License: Public Domain

MERRITT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The crime was caused by the defendant’s addiction to methamphetamine, as the district court suggests and the record makes clear. I regard a sentence of almost 30 years for this 44-year-old man as an unreasonable life sentence, and I would require that the sentence be reduced to a level that considers how long it will take to rehabilitate this man’s addiction. The District Court should take expert proof and give him a sentence “not greater than necessary” to cure his addiction by providing the defendant with “needed medical care, or other correctional treatment” as required by the mandatory federal statutory rules for the “Imposition of Sentence” for federal crimes, as codified in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(2)(D). In my view this is the kind of rehabilitative analysis that United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220, 125 S.Ct. 738, 160 L.Ed.2d 621 (2005), requires after Booker rendered the Sentencing Guidelines merely discretionary. Federal courts should take seriously the language of the statute and should place its rehabilitative rules above those Guidelines that do not allow such an analysis. The sentencing courts should forget about the Guidelines when they conflict with the clear statutory rules. It is clear that the statutory rule limiting punishment to a sentence “not greater than necessary,” combined with the language of rehabilitation contemplating “medical care or other correctional treatment” has been cast aside and not even considered in this case. I would require that these rules be strictly observed and that any Guidelines that do not take this language into account be set aside in the sentencing process.
This view is reinforced by the most intelligent, scholarly discussion of criminal responsibility for addiction that I have read, Stephen J. Morse, Addiction, Genetics and Criminal Responsibility, 69 Law & Contemp. Prob. 165, 205 (2006), who concludes as follows: “Finally, although the criminal justice system might play a useful role in responding to addiction-related action, noncriminal, non-judgmental interventions also should play a substantial role. The criminal justice system response should be limited and reformed to enhance the potential efficacy of treatment approaches.” The statute’s “not greater than necessary” rule combined with medical treatment of addiction requires that sentencing judges take into account miti-gators like addiction.
The Guidelines violate § 3553 by forbidding consideration of addiction and most other significant mitigators. Part H of the Guidelines on “Specific Offender Characteristics” states that “Drug or alcohol dependence or abuse is not a reason for a downward departure” and forbids consideration in the sentencing process. (§ 5H1.4.) Part H states the same thing for many other mitigators — for example, “mental and emotional conditions” such as organic brain damages or low levels of serotonin (§ 5H1.3), youth or old age (§ 5H1.1), and “family responsibilities” such as a parent’s need to care for minor *1037children (§ 5H1.6). Part H does not permit the consideration of any mitigators when assessing “Specific Offender Characteristics.” It is ironic that the Sentencing Commission thinks that juries are capable of taking mitigators into account but judges are not. In other areas of analysis of criminal responsibility — for example, death penalty jurisprudence — the Constitution forbids the use of a sentencing process that proscribes the consideration of addiction and other mitigators by the sen-tencer. Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978) (“The Ohio death penalty statute does not permit the type of individualized consideration of mitigating factors we now hold to be required by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments”). Therefore, in a case like this, the Guidelines are not a reliable or even a rational guide to sentencing. If the federal judiciary is to impose just sentences after Booker, it must extricate itself from the prevailing mind set under the Guidelines that includes almost all conceivable enhancements and aggravators while excluding from consideration almost all significant mitigating circumstances.