114
Opinion of Souter, J.
the court would have imposed the same sentence if it had relied only on susceptibility to abuse in prison and the hardship of successive prosecutions. The Court of Appeals should therefore remand the case to the District Court.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed in part and reversed in part, and the cases are remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice Stevens, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
In my opinion the District Court did not abuse its discretion when it relied on the unusual collateral employment consequences faced by these petitioners as a result of their convictions. I therefore except Part IV-B-1 from my otherwise complete endorsement of the Court's opinion. I also note that I do not understand the opinion to foreclose the District Court from basing a downward departure on an aggregation of factors each of which might in itself be insufficient to justify a departure.
Justice Souter, with whom Justice Ginsburg joins, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I agree with the way today's opinion describes a district court's tasks in sentencing under the Guidelines, and the role of a court of appeals in reviewing sentences, but I part company from the Court in applying its standard on two specific points. I would affirm the Court of Appeals's rejection of the downward departures based on susceptibility to abuse in prison and on successive prosecution, for to do otherwise would be to attribute an element of irrationality to the Commission and to its "heartland" concept. Accordingly, I join the Court's opinion except Part IV-B-3.
As the majority notes, ante, at 106, "Congress did not grant federal courts authority to decide what sorts of sentencing considerations are inappropriate in every circumstance." In
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