United States v. Levy, No. 21-1296 (8th Cir. 2021)
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The Eighth Circuit affirmed defendant's sentence after he pleaded guilty to mail fraud and involuntary manslaughter. Defendant's conviction stemmed from his intoxication at work while he was Chief of Pathology for the Veterans Health Care System of the Ozarks (VSHO).
The court concluded that, because the VHSO ordered the lookback to benefit patients, rather than to help the criminal investigation, the district court did not err by including it in the loss amount calculation. In this case, the district court found that the loss amount caused by defendant's crimes was over two million dollars, including the cost of the lookback, so it imposed a 16-level enhancement. The court also concluded that the district court did not err in imposing an upward departure for disruption of a government function where the lookback was the largest review ever undertaken by the VA system and multiple VA medical centers were burdened by the extra work. Finally, the court concluded that defendant's sentence was procedurally and substantively reasonable where the district court discussed the 18 U.S.C. 3553(a) factors in length and did not abuse its discretion in sentencing defendant to 240 months in prison.
Court Description: [Kobes, Author, with Shepherd and Wollman, Circuit Judges] Criminal case - Sentencing. Where the VA, defendant's employer, had to engage in an extensive review of defendant's cases to determine whether his impairment had impacted diagnosis and treatment of his patients, the district court did not err in including the cost of the "look-back" in the loss amount; nor did the district court err in imposing an upward departure for disruption of a government function; defendant's sentence was not substantively unreasonable.
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