The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals released one opinion today with Colorado ties. Read the summary or full opinion, below.
United States v. Hess, Nos. 25-1191 & 25-1354 (D.C. No. 1:20-CR-00098-CMA-1) (D. Colo.); United States v. Koch, Nos. 25-1179 & 25-1333 (D.C. No. 1:20-CR-00098-CMA-2) (D. Colo.).
Ms. Hess was a funeral-home owner and operator who, over the course of several years, fraudulently obtained, sold, and shipped hundreds of dead bodies and body parts to medical research, plastination, and body-broker companies around the world. Ms. Hess’s mother, Ms. Koch, worked for Ms. Hess at the funeral home and assisted her in dismembering bodies and in preparing bodies and body parts for sale. In these consolidated appeals, Defendants–Appellants Megan Hess and Shirley Koch argue that the district court erred in resentencing them on remand from our decision in United States v. Hess, 106 F.4th 1011 (10th Cir. 2024). We held in Hess that the district court erred in its original sentencing decision by failing to make particularized findings of vulnerability to support the application of a two-level enhancement under § 3A1.1(b)(2) of the U.S. Sentencing Commission Guidelines, which applies when an offense involves a large number of vulnerable victims.
On remand, the district court held a new sentencing hearing and received new evidence of vulnerability. The court then identified twenty-one specific victims whom it identified as particularly vulnerable, and the court therefore overruled Defendants’ objections to the U.S.S.G. § 3A1.1(b)(2) enhancement. Subsequently, after discussing the egregious nature of Defendants’ conduct and the substantial harm caused to their victims, the district court sentenced Ms. Hess to the statutory maximum of 240 months of imprisonment and Ms. Koch to 180 months—the same sentences imposed at the original sentencing proceeding.
In this appeal, Defendants each argue that the district court erred in applying the two-level § 3A1.1(b)(2) enhancement to them. Ms. Hess additionally argues that the district court plainly erred in rejecting evidence of her post-sentencing rehabilitative efforts, while Ms. Koch argues that her 180-month sentence was substantively unreasonable.
We conclude that the district court correctly applied the § 3A1.1(b)(2) enhancement to calculate each Defendant’s advisory Guidelines range. We are also unpersuaded by Ms. Hess’s arguments regarding post-sentencing rehabilitative efforts and Ms. Koch’s substantive reasonableness challenge. Accordingly, exercising jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 3742(a) and 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm the district court’s resentencing decisions as to both Ms. Hess and Ms. Koch.
Senior Judge Christine M. Arguello
Panel: McHUGH, EBEL, and KELLY, Circuit Judges. (Entered for the Court by Judge McHugh.) Decision: We AFFIRM Defendants’ sentences. Read the opinion.