Court Opinion

ID: 9483915
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:35:25.808526+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:54.997303
License: Public Domain

MERRITT, Chief Judge,
dissenting.
I agree with Parts I and II of the Court’s opinion, but I disagree with Part III.
On the perjury issue discussed in Part III, Judge Rosen declined to raise the defendants’ sentence by two levels for obstruction of justice, saying:
I take a fairly dim view of an enhancement based on trial testimony. If the government feels that the obstruction alleged results from trial testimony by a defendant, then the government ought to charge perjury as a separate count.
The prosecutor then suggested that that means the Court found that the defendant had testified truthfully. Judge Rosen replied:
No, I’m not making a finding either way. If you feel that she has committed a separate independent offense, lying under oath, charge her with perjury____ I think that an obstruction enhancement will lay when someone is attempting to threaten witnesses, hide evidence, destroy evidence, somehow to impact the proceedings.
This case appears to add another to the long list of cases in which we have unnecessarily removed judgment and discretion from the district court in sentencing. See, e.g., United States v. Martin, 972 F.2d 349 (6th Cir.1992) (defendant should be sentenced for an acquitted count if judge believes defendant guilty by “preponderance of evidence”) and United States v. Davern, 970 F.2d 1490 (6th Cir.1992) (Merritt, Chief Judge, dissenting from en banc decision and discussing the unnecessary removal of *154discretion from the district courts in many sentencing cases) and United States v. Silverman, 945 F.2d 1337 (6th Cir.1991) (same). The straightjacket of “sentencing reform” becomes ever more tightly bound and inflexible as each month goes by. In the name of “sentencing reform” the sentences go up and up and the sentencing judge becomes more of an automaton controlled by the prosecutor.
I find no language in the sentencing guidelines or the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 which requires the district court in all cases to make a finding on whether a defendant has committed perjury while testifying. This requirement of a “finding” on obstruction is judicially imposed by the Court, not by the guidelines.1 This view seems contrary to the language of United States v. Bennett, 975 F.2d 305 (6th Cir. 1992), decided by a unanimous court only six months ago:
The sentencing court retains considerable discretion in deciding whether a defendant’s perjury amounts to an obstruction of justice under the Guidelines. The court’s decision to assess or not to assess an enhancement will serve the ends of justice as articulated by Congress in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(2) (outlining the factors to be considered in imposing a sentence under the Guidelines). On appeal, we review whether the district court abused its discretion in applying § 3C1.1.
I asked government counsel at oral argument if he knew of any case authority requiring the district court to make a finding on perjury in each such case. He said he had found no precedent so holding. He also said in answer to my question that he knew of no language in the guidelines imposing this requirement to make a finding of fact. It was the government’s view, and now it is apparently the Court’s unstated view, that such a requirement is implicit in the guidelines structure. The Court does not, however, discuss this point or advance its theory for this implicit requirement. The Court apparently simply assumes that a district court is required to make findings on perjury with respect to answers given when the defendant takes the stand and the jury convicts the defendant. Is this rule meant to apply to all answers in all cases so that the requirement will be “uniformly” applied? Or will it be applied only at the prosecutor’s pleasure? Will it be applied only in those cases in which the prosecutor decides to bring the matter up in order to impose this requirement on the district court? It would be helpful for the Court to say where exactly this strict requirement comes from, how and in what circumstances it should be applied and why the district court should be so constrained.

. The guidelines say only that the sentencing judge should "Apply the adjustments as appropriate,” § 1B1.1. I would think the district judge is in a far better position than we to make this judgment and we should give some deference to his judgment that a "finding" is not necessary.