OCTOBER TERM, 1995
Syllabus
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit
No. 94-1664. Argued February 20, 1996—Decided June 13, 1996*
After petitioners, Los Angeles police officers, were acquitted on state charges of assault and excessive use of force in the beating of a suspect during an arrest, they were convicted under 18 U. S. C. § 242 of violating the victim's constitutional rights under color of law. Although the applicable United States Sentencing Guideline, 1992 USSG § 2H1.4, indicated that they should be imprisoned for 70 to 87 months, the District Court granted them two downward departures from that range. The first was based on the victim's misconduct, which contributed significantly to provoking the offense. The second was based on a combination of four factors: (1) that petitioners were unusually susceptible to abuse in prison; (2) that petitioners would lose their jobs and be precluded from employment in law enforcement; (3) that petitioners had been subject to successive state and federal prosecutions; and (4) that petitioners posed a low risk of recidivism. The sentencing range after the departures was 30 to 37 months, and the court sentenced each petitioner to 30 months. The Ninth Circuit reviewed the departure decisions de novo and rejected all of them.
Held: 1. An appellate court should not review de novo a decision to depart from the Guideline sentencing range, but instead should ask whether the sentencing court abused its discretion. Pp. 92-100. (a) Although the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 requires that a district court impose a sentence within the applicable Guideline range in an ordinary case, 18 U. S. C. § 3553(a), it does not eliminate all of the district court's traditional sentencing discretion. Rather, it allows a departure from the range if the court finds "there exists an aggravating or mitigating circumstance of a kind, to a degree, not adequately taken into consideration" by the Sentencing Commission in formulating the Guidelines, § 3553(b). The Commission states that it has formulated each Guideline to apply to a "heartland" of typical cases and that it did not "adequately . . . conside[r]" atypical cases, 1995 USSG ch. 1, pt. A,
*Together with No. 94-8842, Powell v. United States, also on certiorari to the same court.
81
Page: Index Previous 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007