United States v. West

In United States v. West, —- F.4th —-, No. 22-11001 (5th Cir. Apr. 25, 2024), the Fifth Circuit vacated a restitution order because “the district court failed to conduct a proximate-cause analysis as required by precedent.”

As a preliminary matter, the Fifth Circuit held that West’s appellate waiver in his plea agreement did not bar this appeal because it included an exception for sentences that exceed the statutory maximum punishment. And “[a]s binding precedent has repeatedly held, orders of restitution without a proximate-cause analysis constitute sentences above the statutory maximum.” That conclusion was particularly apt here, because “the government and the district court cited inapplicable statutes as justification for the order of restitution.”

Holding: The failure to conduct a proximate-cause analysis before imposing restitution was plainly erroneous, so the restitution order must be vacated. The case was remanded for further proceedings, even though “this may well lead to a restitution order requiring West to pay far more than the $6,000 he was initially ordered to pay.”

Reasoning: Having pled guilty to production of child pornography, West was subject to 18 U.S.C. § 2259(b)(1), which permits restitution in “the full amount of the victim’s losses.” Here, the PSR cited two other (inapplicable) statutes, but “even had the district court” applied the correct law, “its restitution order would still exceed the statutory maximum” because of a second error.

Under § 2259, a restitution order is proper “only to the extent the defendant’s offense proximately caused a victim’s losses.” Paroline v. United States, 572 U.S. 434, 448 (2014) (emphasis added). Following Paroline, the Fifth Circuit has held that if a court “orders a defendant to pay restitution under § 2259 without determining that the defendant’s conduct proximately caused the victim’s claimed losses, the amount of restitution necessarily exceeds the statutory maximum.” United States v. Winchel, 896 F.3d 387, 389 (5th Cir. 2018).

Here, the record “contain[ed] only a free-floating restitution order of $6,000, untethered to any determination of the loss suffered by the victim in this case,” so Winchel and other precedent required that order be deemed illegal in excess of the statutory maximum.

N.B.: The appellate waiver issue would likely have been decided differently if the defendant objected to the district court’s method of conducting the proximate-cause analysis rather than arguing that no such analysis was performed. An “appeal waiver like West’s applies if the defendant’s argument is that there was a calculation error, but not if the district court failed to conduct the mandatory proximate-cause analysis altogether.”