U.S. V. Saenz
| Decision Date | 23 March 2006 |
| Docket Number | No. CR03-4089-MWB.,CR03-4089-MWB. |
| Citation | 429 F.Supp.2d 1081 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Kim Darby SAENZ, Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Iowa |
Joseph J. Hrvol, Council Bluffs, IA, for Defendant.
Jamie D. Bowers, U.S. Attorney's Office, Sioux City, IA, for Plaintiff.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. THE CONTEXT OF SUBSTANTIAL ASSISTANCE DEPARTURES ................. 1084
A. Sentencing In The Northern District Of Iowa.................... 1084
1. The defendants ............................................. 1084
2. The sentences .............................................. 1084
B. Legal Standards For Substantial Assistance Departures ......... 1087
1. Points of agreement ........................................ 1088
2. The point of disagreement .................................. 1090
a. The legal flaw .......................................... 1090
b. The factual flaw ........................................ 1091
C. The Lessons From The Sentencing Report ........................ 1092
1. The range of "ordinary" substantial assistance departures .. 1092
2. The "reasonableness" of "starting in the middle"............ 1093
3. Reorientation of perceptions ............................... 1096
II. SAENZ'S RESENTENCING ............................................. 1098
A. Background And Original Sentence .............................. 1099
B. The Decision On Appeal ........................................ 1099
C. Proceedings On Remand ......................................... 1100
1. Additional evidence ........................................ 1100
2. Arguments of the parties ................................... 1102
D. Determination Of Sentence ..................................... 1104
1. The appropriate procedure .................................. 1104
2. Determination of the Guidelines sentence ................... 1105
3. "Reasonableness" of the Guidelines sentence ................ 1107
4. Consideration of a non-Guidelines sentence ................. 1108
III. CONCLUSION ....................................................... 1108
With some notable exceptions, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has recently reversed and remanded several of my sentencing decisions on the ground that my downward departures in excess of 50 percent for "substantial assistance" pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 5K1.1 and 18 U.S.C. § 3553(e) were "unreasonable" and "excessive."1 This case represents one such reversal and is now before me on remand for resentencing. With all due respect, I write to express my profound disagreement with the Circuit Court's rationale for this string of reversals. As a United States District Court Judge, I do recognize that I must faithfully and unflinchingly follow Circuit law, even when I disagree with it—as I do here. This is equally true whether the Circuit Court's rationale is newly-minted, as I believe it is here, or based on long-standing, rock solid precedent, as it sometimes is in other contexts. I write this opinion expressing my specific disagreement with the Circuit Court's position concerning the proper extent of substantial assistance downward departures on legal grounds as well as on the factual basis of data recently compiled by the United States Sentencing Commission to which the Circuit Court did not have access at the time that it reversed and remanded this and other cases in this string of reversals.
My major point of contention with this string of reversals is the notion expressed by the Circuit Court in some of its decisions that a 50 percent reduction for substantial assistance is "extraordinary." There is, in my view, no basis for such a benchmark in federal statutory law, federal common law, the United States Sentencing Guidelines themselves, the realities of federal sentencing, or basic concepts of fairness, mercy, and justice. Indeed, recent data compiled by the United States Sentencing Commission demonstrate that labeling a 50 percent reduction for substantial assistance "extraordinary" is at odds with the facts and so deeply troubling that the Circuit Court should reevaluate its position. I will return to this point, in detail, below. However, I must first address some critical issues of context for sentencing generally and substantial assistance downward departures in particular.
First, I wish to point out the simple truth that most of the individuals I sentence in drug cases are drug addicts. More specifically, most are methamphetamine addicts-they are users and low level dealers who deal solely to support their severe addiction. I can go a year sentencing only methamphetamine addicts with court-appointed C.J.A. lawyers rather than privately retained lawyers, because virtually all of the methamphetamine defendants that I have sentenced are impecunious as a result of their addiction. They are almost never drug "kingpins." In my eleven-plus years of sentencing drug defendants, I have sentenced very few "kingpins." The two most recent "kingpins" to appear in my court received the death penalty for murders related to their drug trafficking. See, e.g., United States v. Johnson, 403 F.Supp.2d 721 (N.D.Iowa 2005); United States v. Honken, 381 F.Supp.2d 936 (N.D.Iowa 2005). As distinguished from the few "kingpins" to appear in my court, many "addict" defendants provide some assistance to the government in the prosecution of others. When the government moves for substantial assistance reductions, I try to provide reasonable reductions in light of the degree of substantial assistance actually provided.
I must also point out that, contrary to the perception that this string of reversals may have engendered, I am not habitually a lenient sentencer, for drug-trafficking offenses or any other kinds of offenses. My sentencing record shows that I have not hesitated to depart or vary upward, even sua sponte when the government failed to seek such a departure, when I deemed it appropriate to do so, for example, in cases involving defendants who were egregiously violent, defendants whose criminal history calculations woefully under-represented their actual criminal histories (too numerous to cite individually), or defendants for whom other factors justified an increased sentence. See, e.g., United States v. Rouillard, No. CR05-4068-MWB (N.D.Iowa Mar. 22, 2006) () (granting an upward departure under U.S.S.G. § 4A1.3 for underrepresentation of criminal history, over the government's objection, and an upward variance under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), also over the government's objection, from an advisory guideline range of 30 to 37 months to the statutory maximum of 120 months); United States v. Pablo-Lepe, No. CR 03-4102-MWB (N.D.Iowa July 23, 2004) () (the undersigned's first post-Blakely sentencing decision finding the United States Sentencing Guidelines unconstitutional and varying the defendant's sentence upward from an advisory Guidelines range of 15 to 21 months to the statutory maximum of 60 months), aff'd, 125 Fed.Appx. 100 (8th Cir.2005) (unpublished op.) (per curiam); United States v. Yahnke, 297 F.Supp.2d 1173 (N.D.Iowa 2003) (), aff'd, 395 F.3d 823 (8th Cir.2005); United States v. Flores, 223 F.Supp.2d 1016 (N.D.Iowa 2002) (), aff'd, 336 F.3d 760 (8th Cir.2003).
Moreover, according to data from the United States Sentencing Commission for fiscal year 2003, the latest such data available, the median sentence for drug-trafficking offenses in the Northern District of Iowa is 120 months, which is not only twice the national median of 60 months for such offenses, but the highest median sentence for such offenses in the nation. This District's median sentence for drug-trafficking offenses is also well in excess of the median sentence of 84 months for such offenses for district courts in the Eighth Circuit, at least double the median sentence for such offenses for district courts in the First, Third, Tenth, and District of Columbia Circuits, and triple or nearly triple the median sentence for such offenses for district courts in the Second, Fifth, and Ninth Circuits.2 Even recognizing that there are other factors involved, where this District has the highest median sentence in the nation for drug-trafficking offenses, it cannot be said that I or any other judge in this District is habitually a lenient sentencer.
Thus, the issue is not, or should not be, whether or not I am an excessively lenient sentencer. I am not. What I am is a very experienced sentencer, having sentenced over 1,400 defendants to prison, where the vast majority of those defendants were sentenced for drug-trafficking crimes.3 This is no surprise, given that our District had the sixth highest criminal caseload per judge in the nation for 2001 through 2003, behind five districts in states along the southwestern...
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...And Order Regarding Resentencing (docket no. 55) following remand from the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. See United States v. Saenz, 429 F.Supp.2d 1081 (N.D.Iowa 2006). In that order, the court sentenced defendant Kim Darby Saenz, now known as Kimberly Edwards, to 20 months imprisonment ......