Court Opinion

ID: 9497276
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:47:28.060905+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:05.980550
License: Public Domain

HAWKINS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Conditions of supervised release must be reasonably related to- and “involve no greater deprivation of liberty than is reasonably necessary” to deter criminal conduct, protect the public, and rehabilitate the offender. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 3553(a)(1)-(2); 3583(d)(2); United States v. Williams, 356 F.3d 1045, 1056 (9th Cir.2004). Clearly, the shaming punishment1 at issue in this case was intended to humiliate Ge-mentera. And that is all it will do. Any attempt to classify the goal of the punishment as anything other than humiliation would be disingenuous.2 Because humiliation is not one of the three proper goals under the Sentencing Reform Act,3 I *611would hold that the district court abused its discretion in imposing the condition.
There is precious little federal authority-on sentences that include shaming components, perhaps indicative of a recognition that whatever legal justification may be marshaled in support of sentences involving public humiliation, they simply have no place in the majesty of an Article III courtroom. Some state courts have reviewed such sentences and the results have been mixed.
People v. Hackler, 13 Cal.App.4th 1049, 16 Cal.Rptr.2d 681, 686-87 (1993), involved a condition that required a shoplifting offender to wear a court-provided t-shirt whenever he left the house that read: “My record plus two six-packs equals four years” on the front and “I am on felony probation for theft” on the back. Applying a state sentencing regime similar to the federal guidelines — authorizing the imposition of reasonable conditions of probation to foster rehabilitation and to protect public safety — the court struck down the condition. Id. at 686, 13 Cal.App.4th 1049. The court held that the relationship between the required conduct (wearing the t-shirt) and the defendant’s crime (stealing beer) was so incidental that it was not reasonable and that the true intent behind the condition was to expose Hackler to “public ridicule and humiliation” and not “to foster rehabilitation.” Id. at 686-87, 13 Cal.App.4th 1049.
As in Hackler’s case, the purpose behind the sandwich board condition was not to rehabilitate Gementera, but rather to turn him into a modern day Hester Prynne.4 This sort of condition is simply improper under the Sentencing Reform Act. See also Springer v. United States, 148 F.2d 411, 415-16(9th Cir.1945) (invalidating a condition that a convicted draft dodger donate a pint of blood to the Red Cross).
Ballenger v. State, 210 Ga.App. 627, 436 S.E.2d 793 (1993), approved a condition that a convicted drunk driver wear a fluorescent pink identification bracelet identifying him as such. By my lights, the dissent in Ballenger is far more persuasive. Concluding that the purpose of the condition was clearly to humiliate, Judge Blackburn argued that “a rationale of rehabilitation may not be used to vest ... authority[to prescribe this type of punishment] in the judiciary.” Id. at 795-96 (Blackburn, J. dissenting).
Just as in Hackler and Ballenger, the true intention in this case was to humiliate Gementera, not to rehabilitate him or to deter him from future wrongdoing. When the district court initially imposed the sandwich board condition, the judge explained that Gementera should have to suffer the “humiliation of having to stand and be labeled in front of people coming and going from a post office as somebody who has stolen the mail.” Subsequently, Gementera filed a motion to correct the sentence by having the sandwich board condition removed. He urged that humiliation was not a legitimate objective of punishment or release conditions. Only at the hearing on Gementera’s motion did the district court change its characterization of the shaming punishment, remarking that the punishment was one of deterrence and rehabilitation and not merely humiliation.
Although the majority opinion initially seems to accept the district court’s retroactive justification for the punishment, it later as much as concedes that the sandwich board condition amounted to a shaming punishment. Admitting that the condition was “crude” and “could entail risk of social withdrawal and stigmatization,” the *612majority nonetheless finds the condition acceptable because it was “coupled with more socially useful provisions.” [Op. at 606] Put another way, the majority says that it is not considering “a stand-alone condition intended soley to humiliate, but rather a comprehensive set of conditions.” [Op. at 606] But the majority cites to no provision in the Sentencing Reform Act and to no case law indicating that conditions on supervised release should be reviewed as a set and not individually, or that humiliation somehow ceases to be humiliation when combined with other punishment. Cf. United States v. Eyler, 67 F.3d 1386, 1393-94 (9th Cir.1995) (“Any discretionary condition must meet each of the three broad conditions set forth in [the Sentencing Reform Act].” (emphasis added)). The majority’s position seems to be that even if one condition of a sentence manifestly violates the Sentencing Act, it can be cured by coupling the provision with other, proper ones. When such a novel proposition is put forward and no case law is cited to support it, there is usually a reason. At the end of the day, we are charged with evaluating a condition whose primary purpose is to humiliate, and that condition should simply not be upheld.
Although I believe that the sandwich board condition violates the Sentencing Reform Act and we should reverse the district court for that reason, I also believe that this is simply bad policy. A fan-measure of a civilized society is how its institutions behave in the space between what it may have the power to do and what it should do. The shaming component of the sentence in this case fails that test. ‘When one shames another person, the goal is to degrade the object of shame, to place him lower in the chain of being, to dehumanize him.”5
To affirm the imposition of such punishments recalls a time in our history when pillories and stocks were the order of the day. To sanction such use of power runs the very great risk that by doing so we instill “a sense of disrespect for the criminal justice system” itself. Ballenger, 436 S.E.2d at 796 (Blackburn, J. dissenting).
I would vacate the sentence and remand for re-sentencing, instructing the district court that public humiliation or shaming has no proper place in our system of justice.

.One scholar has defined a "shaming” punishment as "marked by two features: first, there is an attempt to debase, degrade, or humiliate the offender; and second, the degradation occurs before the public eye, often but not always with the aid of the public.” Dan Markel, Are Shaming Punshments Beautifully Retributive? Retributivism and the Implications for the Alternative Sanctions Debate, 54 Vand. L.Rev. 2157, 2178 (Nov.2001). This condition — requiring Gementera to wear a sandwich board outside a public post office declaring his crime' — clearly qualifies as a "shaming” punishment.

. The district judge was forthright in his statement regarding why he imposed the condition: "[Gementera] needs to understand the disapproval that society has for this kind of conduct, and that’s the idea behind the humiliation.”

. The three goals are deterrence, rehabilitation, and protection of the public. 18 U.S.C. §§ 3553(a)(2).

. See Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter; Hackler, 16 Cal.Rptr.2d at 686.

. Markel, supra note 1 at 2179.