United States v. Paige Thompson

background and characteristics are proper considerations at sentencing, but they may not be the sole basis for the chosen sentence. The panel explained that fraud crimes typically are calculated and, as a result, are particularly amenable to general deterrence. The district court’s failure to give this factor meaningful weight was a clear error of judgment. As for specific deterrence, the district court’s failure to consider highly relevant evidence of Thompson’ risk of recidivism was an abuse of discretion. Beyond the district court’s general acknowledgment that the Guidelines help avoid sentencing disparities, nothing in the record indicates that the district court weighed the risk of unwarranted disparity in choosing the sentence. Given the district court’s unsupported findings on some of the relevant facts, the panel concluded that the district court’s explanation for the sentence it imposed is inadequate to justify the resulting disparity between Thompson’s sentence and the sentences imposed in other cases, which is a weighty consideration given the extent of the district court’s variance. Dissenting, Judge Sung concluded that the sentence is substantively reasonable under an…