Court Opinion

ID: 9482831
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:02:15.552572+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:14.369141
License: Public Domain

GREENBERG, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I join in Judge COWEN’s opinion but write separately to express an additional point.1 I agree with him that the implicit basis for the departure was that Thomas avoided the mandatory minimum 15 year sentence provided in 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(1). Indeed, the government in its brief urges that its decision to forego charging Thomas with an offense punishable by this mandatory sentence “is a circumstance not adequately taken into consideration by the Sentencing Commission in formulating the guidelines.” I also agree with the government that the “incontrovertible facts” established that Thomas was subject to that sentence by reason of his violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). In my view the only way Thomas could have avoided the 15 year sentence, if he had been properly charged, would have been on the basis of either an inexplicable foul-up at trial or jury nullification. But yet he was not charged as he could have been.
Why is this so? Without doubt it is because the prosecutor determined that the 15 year sentence was too harsh. Thus, we are confronted with an attempt to justify the departure, which I agree must ultimately fail. The real problem in this case is that the prosecutor has declined to enforce a law which represents an important policy determination by Congress. Thomas seems to me to be a classic case of a person to whom the mandatory 15 year penalty
Because the district court's upward departure was not based on the consolidation of the post office break-ins, we do not address whether a departure on this ground would have been appropriate. *1125should be applied. As Judge Cowen notes, notwithstanding Thomas’s long criminal record, he purchased five firearms. Furthermore, the investigation leading to this prosecution seems to have originated from Thomas’s acts of domestic violence. Thomas seems to me to be a bomb waiting to explode. What was his reason for acquiring five firearms, one of which was a Taurus .357 Magnum revolver? While I do not suggest that the prosecutor was without discretion in this matter, I do believe that it should be a rare case in which a prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), of a multiple-offense offender possessing a firearm, should be declined. Thus, I believe that the courts should not participate in convoluted procedures to thwart congressional will as expressed in 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(1). While I realize that mandatory sentences are not popular with some judges, it is for Congress to determine the circumstances requiring such sentences. In the future, the problem presented by this ease can be avoided if the important public policy represented by 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(1) is honored.

. I do not understand the opinion to preclude in all circumstances the possibility of a departure predicated on conduct which could have been the basis for additional charges but was not. Here there is a special situation in that the government expressly declined to prosecute Thomas under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) and, indeed, agreed not to prosecute him under that section so long as Thomas did not commit a further offense or violate the terms, of supervised release.