United States v. Johnson

In United States v. Johnson, —- F. 4th —-, No. 22-30242 (5th Cir. Feb. 14, 2024), the Fifth Circuit rejected the defendants’ challenges to their $3.5 million restitution order and rejected one of the defendant’s challenge to the loss calculation in her Sentencing Guidelines.

Defendants Marty Johnson and Keesha Dinkins were the owner and employee of a mental health rehabilitation clinic. The owner, Johnson, pled guilty to conspiracy to commit healthcare and wire fraud, and the employee, Dinkins, pled guilty to misprision of a felony.

In their plea agreements, both defendants stipulated that Medicaid lost $3.5 million and recommended that the court order $3.5 million in restitution. Even so, both defendants later challenged the $3.5 million restitution amount, and Dinkins argued that she should not be held responsible for all the loss because she was unaware of many details.

Ruling 1: The district court did not err in ordering $3.5 million in restitution. That amount was based on estimates drawn from the record, the PSR, and both defendants’ plea agreements and stipulations. Additionally, the defendants failed to submit any evidence to rebut the $3.5 million calculation.

The Fifth Circuit ended the restitution section of its opinion with this: “The criminal justice system in this country relies on plea agreements to provide efficient resolutions to criminal cases. Indeed, over 95 percent of federal criminal cases are resolved without trial. It would undermine the principle that plea bargains are contracts to hold that a party can agree to a specific amount of restitution, supported by record evidence, and then in the next breath, challenge an order imposing that exact amount of restitution.”

Ruling 2: The district court did not err by using $3.5 million as the loss amount when calculating Dinkins’ Sentencing Guidelines. It rejected Dinkins’ argument that she was kept in the dark about much of the criminal scheme, saying it was “contradicted by the record.” Importantly, in her plea agreement, Dinkins and the Government had jointly recommended that she “be assessed a loss of $3,500,000.00” under the Guidelines. The district court did not err in holding Dinkins to that agreement.

Concurrence: Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod wrote a concurring opinion to “highlight some concerns with the restitution calculation.” She emphasized that the Government bears the burden of proving the amount of a victim’s actual loss before restitution can be ordered; but when it meets that burden, the burden then shifts to the defendants to dispute the calculation. Here, there were issues with the Government’s calculation, but the defendants “failed to counter the information in the PSR report or suggest that they deserved a greater offset for bona fide services,” so the $3.5 million restitution order should stand.