Court Opinion

ID: 9580243
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:03:29.64706+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:36:09.866708
License: Public Domain

GOULD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Kevin Lee Ruff will serve just one day in prison for using his position as materials supervisor at Sacred Heart Medical Center (“SHMC”) to steal $644,866 of supplies, selling the stolen materials on eBay, and covering his tracks by entering more than one thousand false downward inventory adjustments to SHMC’s computerized inventory log. His extensive course of dishonest conduct was neither short-lived nor sporadic. Instead, he extended his embezzlement scheme for several years during which he grew progressively bolder, and stole an increasing number of supplies. Ruffs sentence with only one day of imprisonment is not reasonable and we should say so in no uncertain terms.
I agree with the majority that, under Gall and Rita, sentencing is a discretionary decision made by a district court after engaging in an individualized evaluation of the facts of a case and applying the § 3553(a) factors to the particular offender before it. Where I part ways with the majority, however, is in the scope of our duty, as an appellate court, to review a district court’s sentencing decision for abuse of discretion. As Chief Justice John Marshall long ago stated, discretionary choices are not left to the district court’s “inclination, but to its judgment; and its judgment is to be guided by sound legal principles.” United States v. Burr, 25 F.Cas. 30, 35 (No. 14,692d) (C.C.D.Va. *10051807).1 The abuse of discretion standard of review is not a rubber stamp of all sentencing decisions made by a district court. Instead, it requires us to vacate a sentence when it is substantively unreasonable. Where “we have a definite and firm conviction that the district court committed a clear error of judgement” in imposing a particular sentence, it is our duty to vacate the sentence as unreasonable. See SEC v. Coldicutt, 258 F.3d 939, 941 (9th Cir.2001). Here, the reasons given by the district court to support its sentence do not warrant a one-day prison term, even given the condition of supervised release that Ruff spend twelve months and a day in a residential confinement facility. This sentence is a substantively unreasonable punishment for Ruffs theft of more than a half-million dollars in inventory supplies from his nonprofit employer.
The majority asserts that the Supreme Court’s decision in Gall supports the conclusion that the district court did not abuse its discretion in sentencing Ruff to a one-day prison term followed by three years of supervised release, twelve months and a day of which will be served in a residential confinement facility. I cannot agree. In Gall, the Supreme Court identified two factors that allowed it to conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion by deciding not to sentence Gall to prison: Gall’s post-crime maturation and self-rehabilitation. 128 S.Ct. at 600-02. The Supreme Court concluded that the district court “quite reasonably attached great weight to Gall’s self-motivated rehabilitation,” determining that it provided the district court with “greater justification” than if the “rehabilitation [had] occurred after he was charged with the crime,” and that Gall’s self-rehabilitation “lend[ed] strong support to the conclusion that imprisonment was not necessary to deter Gall from engaging in future criminal conduct or to protect the public from his future criminal acts.” Id. The Supreme Court also concluded that the district court reasonably justified the Guidelines departure by pointing to Gall’s young age and immaturity at the time of his crime, and his subsequent maturity thereafter demonstrated by withdrawing from the conspiracy, ending all drug use, and starting his own business, all before being prosecuted. Id. at 601. These two key factors — post-crime maturation and self-rehabilitation— are not present in Ruffs case. Unlike Gall, Ruff was not immature when he began his criminal conduct at the age of 38. He had a son and had been lawfully employed for several years. Nor did Ruff self-rehabilitate; he continued his criminal conduct until he was caught, stealing more than a half-million dollars in supplies from a non-profit hospital over a three-and-a-half-year period, with the pace and severity of his theft increasing year by year until he was caught.
This latter distinction is important. The Supreme Court in Gall concluded that the district court’s sentence of probation was reasonable because Gall’s rehabilitation before he was contacted by authorities for his involvement in the drug conspiracy supported the conclusion that imprisonment was not necessary to prevent future criminal conduct. 128 S.Ct. at 602. In this case, the district court identified Ruffs remorsefulness and willingness to cooperate with authorities as support for his one-day sentence, but these factors, which Ruff only exhibited once he was caught, do not support a conclusion that imprisonment is unnecessary to prevent Ruff from engaging in future criminal conduct. The district court cited other factors to support his sentence: (1) Ruffs age as a *1006first-time offender; (2) his mental, financial and gambling problems; (3) his earlier history of “strong employment;” and (4) his need to pay restitution. Although these factors support some departure from the 30 to 37 months of imprisonment recommended by the Guidelines, they do not provide sufficient justification under Gall for a one-day prison term for a crime of this magnitude. Id. at 597(“[A] major departure should be supported by a more significant justification than a minor one.” (emphasis added)). The district court committed a clear error of judgment in the conclusion it reached upon weighing the § 3553(a) factors.
The majority’s opinion suggests that the condition of Ruffs supervised release which requires that he live for twelve months and a day in a residential confinement facility is sufficiently similar to imprisonment to make Ruffs one-day prison sentence substantively reasonable. I disagree. As a resident of Geiger Corrections Center, Ruff will be permitted to participate in release programs for work, treatment, counseling, and child visitations. This is a far cry from imprisonment, where prisoners are confined twenty-four hours per day and sleep in prison cells at night. Precisely because of these differences, the district court had to resen-tence Ruff to place him in Geiger: the non-prison facility does not house prisoners, but instead provides a residence for convicts on supervised release.
To provide for a mere slap on the wrist of those convicted of serious economic crimes, with no or virtually no time imprisoned as punishment, strikes a blow to the integrity of our criminal justice system. In the end, if not corrected, the majority’s approach will be dangerous to respect for our legal system. Can it be seriously maintained that wilful offenders who commit white collar crime, who steal intentionally hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, should receive no forced incarceration, while those poor and powerless criminal defendants who commit common larceny or theft often serve extensive hard time? I respectfully dissent because I do not believe it prudent for us as an appellate court to hold as reasonable sentences that in their laxity to white collar crime are patently unreasonable, and that indeed will likely be considered offensively unreasonable to the vast majority of law abiding citizens who may become aware of these proceedings. Members of the public with respect for the law, even if they have less learning than appellate judges on our standards for abuse of discretion review and on the principle of deference to trial court sentencing, will doubtless consider it almost inconceivable that a man who steals more than a half-million dollars in a calculated and prolonged course of deception and embezzlement over several years will suffer only a single day in prison. I respectfully dissent because I have a firm and definite conviction that we err in holding Ruffs sentence here to be reasonable.
This is not the first case in which a panel of our court has upheld as reasonable a lax sentence for a white collar criminal. United States v. Whitehead, 532 F.3d 991 (9th Cir.2008) (per curiam). In Whitehead, Judge Bybee wrote a vigorous dissent with which I substantially agree. It seems inescapable that we as a court need to spend more time thinking about the appropriate punishment for white collar crime.
We perhaps also ought to consider why it is that such light sentences are all too frequently handed out by district courts for white collar crimes. Cf. Peter Fridirici, Does Economic Crime Pay in Pennsylvania? The Perception of Leniency in Pennsylvania Economic Offender Sentencing, 45 Vill. L.Rev. 793, 809-18 (2000) (explaining the United States Sentencing *1007Commission’s policy objective to rectify the perceived leniency toward white collar offenders by providing in the Guidelines short but certain terms of imprisonment for economic crimes that would have likely resulted in only probation prior to the Guidelines).
There is no doubt that prisons filled with dangerous inmates are dangerous places and some district courts may hesitate to confine white collar criminals in such dangerous facilities. However, the ordinary convict is subjected to these risks and forced to run a gauntlet of varied threats with imprisonment, so it is hard for me to see how we can favor the class of offenders who commit white collar crimes. It may be that district courts sentencing white collar criminals can more often identify with the criminal who may ostensibly have a slot in society. But, socioeconomic comfort with a criminal convict is not a sufficient reason to show such extreme leniency that economic crimes will not be deterred. It may also be that a non-incarcerated convict will be in a superior position to make restitution to the victims of his crimes. And possibly for that reason we see cases where the corporate victim favors either no prison time or early release to get a better and earlier chance for restitution. But, absent sufficient penalty for such serious crimes, society runs the risk that the convict may offend again, and, for all we know, make restitution with the fruits of a future crime. A victim’s desire for restitution or for conditions facilitating restitution cannot be given primacy over protecting society from the white collar criminal or deterring others from attempting similar crimes.
Ruff stole $644,866 of supplies from the non-profit hospital that employed him. He assiduously pursued his path of deception by entering false data in the hospital inventory logs, showing the calculated and intentional manner of his dishonesty for years, and sold his ill-gotten loot on eBay. Ruff did not end his three-and-a-half-year crime spree until he was questioned by hospital staff. The Guidelines recommended 30 to 37 months of imprisonment, but the district court sentenced Ruff to just one day in prison followed by three years of supervised release, twelve months and a day of which is to be served in the Geiger residential confinement facility. This trivial imprisonment for this major crime is substantively unreasonable. Hence, with respect but a firm conviction that the majority is wrong, I dissent.

. This statement was made by Chief Justice Marshall when he sat on the Circuit Court of the District of Virginia in the celebrated case involving Aaron Burr’s trial for treason.