Court Opinion

ID: 9482118
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:40:54.42357+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:46.619952
License: Public Domain

WINTER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent.
I do not agree with my colleagues that United States v. Lara, 905 F.2d 599 (2d Cir.1990), held that a downward departure may be based on the vulnerability of a prisoner to physical assault. Lara involved a prisoner with an immature and fragile appearance and a bisexual orientation who, during his presentence incarceration, had been threatened with being forced to become a male prostitute. Prison officials determined that the only way to protect Lara was to place him in solitary confinement — in “the hole.” Id. at 601. The Lara opinion thus stated:
Although we agree [that the Commission considered the propensity of criminal defendants to physical attack in prison when it formulated the Guidelines], it is plain that the Commission did not consider vulnerability to the extent revealed in this record — where the only means for prison officials to protect [the prisoner] was to place him in solitary confinement.
Id. at 602. It further stated:
[T]he district court obviously believed it had such an extraordinary situation be*528cause of the defendant’s particular vulnerability due to his immature appearance, sexual orientation and fragility. The severity of [defendant’s] prison term is exacerbated by his placement in solitary confinement as the only means of segregating him from other inmates. We agree with the district court that this presents an extraordinary situation that warrants considering factors ‘ordinarily’ irrelevant.
Lara held that, although the Commission considered the vulnerability of prisoners to physical assault, it had not considered circumstances in which the only means of protecting a prisoner vulnerable to homosexual or physical assault was solitary confinement. In such a case, the exacerbation of the circumstances of the prisoner’s confinement by placing him in “the hole” justifies a reduction in the length of confinement. Lara thus holds no more than that a shorter period in solitary confinement is the punishment equivalent of a longer term in the prison population.
In the instant matter, the prisoner is neither bisexual nor homosexual, does not have a record of being assaulted, and is not going to be placed in solitary confinement. Of course, assaults or even the daily fear of assault take their toll, and a humane judge might well consider this in sentencing a prisoner under a legal regime that allows sentencing judges discretion to take into account the broad range of matters thought by the judge to be relevant to a particular sentence. We do not operate under such a legal regime, however. Instead, we operate under the reign of the Sentencing Guidelines, and sentencing judges may depart from those Guidelines only when “the court finds that there exists an aggravating or mitigating circumstance of a kind, or to a degree, not adequately taken into consideration by the Sentencing Commission in formulating the guidelines.” 18 U.S.C. § 3553(b) (1988).
Lara held that the Commission did consider the vulnerability of prisoners to physical assault in formulating the Guidelines. Lara, 905 F.2d at 603. If the Commission took vulnerability to physical assault into account, its consideration would have begun with the most vulnerable prisoners and worked back from there. There is no evidence that the Commission irrationally ignored the most vulnerable prisoners and considered the plight only of prisoners generally able to protect themselves but still vulnerable to random assault. There is thus no legal basis for a downward departure in the instant case.
This result may be inhumane, but I see no alternative in the face of the two legislative decisions to the contrary — one by the Commission in codifying the Guidelines, the other by the Congress in accepting them. The creation of the Guidelines regime reflected a decision that the justice in greater uniformity — or perceived uniformity — in sentencing outweighs the justice that flows from highly individualized sentencing. The particular Guidelines adopted reflect a judgment that the pre-Guidelines regime was not sufficiently punitive. One may quarrel with both judgments, but we lack the power to subvert them, a result I fear the present decision achieves.
The subversion of the Guidelines’ goal of uniformity is aggravated by the fact that the ground for a downward departure relied upon by my colleagues lacks contour. Any defendant under average height seems eligible. Whether a prisoner succeeds in appearing vulnerable is an entirely subjective judgment by the district judge, with the result that wide disparities in sentences will result, depending largely upon whether a defendant is before a sympathetic or unsympathetic judge.1
Moreover, the reasons for the downward departure to 33 months are unclear. The district judge stated on the record that he *529wanted to ensure that Gonzalez would be placed in a minimum security facility. That could have been achieved by a sentence of 96 months, a one-month downward departure. Complete protection from physical assault in prison could have been achieved by a sentence of no jail time. Shortening the sentence to 33 months thus neither protects Gonzalez from assault nor effectuates the Commission’s view as to appropriate sentences for narcotics offenders. The reduced sentence thus seems to have no logical basis. If Gonzalez is assaulted on numerous occasions during his 33-month sentence, then his sentence will have been inhumanely long. Given the perceived importance of Gonzalez’s age and size, a 33-month sentence appears to incarcerate him during the period of his greatest vulnerability. If Gonzalez is not assaulted, he may grow a bit and look considerably older as his 33-month term comes to an end. In that case, Gonzalez will serve a sentence that is about one-third or less of what is served by prisoners who have committed the same crime.
Of course, as I noted above, continuous fear of assaults will exacerbate the circumstances of a prisoner’s sentence and that may have been a factor in the district court’s decision. However humane that consideration may be, I cannot say that the Commission did not take this factor into account. Moreover, the degree of apprehension about physical assault suffered by a prisoner will be the result of a manifold of intangible factors. It is entirely subjective and not necessarily related to age, size or appearance. The number of defendants eligible for a downward departure on that ground is thus virtually unlimited, and the Guidelines’ goal of uniformity will be thoroughly subverted.

. Beyond the brief subjective observations of the district judge, the record contains little but Gonzalez's height and weight, 5'2", 110 lbs., not specifically relied upon by my colleagues, and a couple of photographs that do not reveal a vulnerable appearance but do not exclude it either.
The district court found only that Gonzalez would be vulnerable to homosexual or nonsexual assaults. In contrast, my colleagues find as an adjudicative fact that Gonzalez may be subject to homophobic assaults. This finding, not supported by the record, is taken from an article in the Harvard Law Review.