United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit
No. 24-1262
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Appellee,
v.
STEVE LEON WAITHE,
Defendant, Appellant.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. Patti B. Saris, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Montecalvo, Lipez, and Aframe, Circuit Judges.
Jane F. Peachy, Assistant Federal Public Defender, for appellant. Karen L. Eisenstadt, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Leah B. Foley, United States Attorney, was on brief, for appellee.
August 12, 2025 AFRAME, Circuit Judge. Former college track and field
coach Steve Waithe pleaded guilty to a multi-count indictment
charging schemes to obtain nude and semi-nude photographs from
over a hundred women, including many Waithe knew personally.
Waithe's guideline sentencing range was twenty-seven to
thirty-three months of imprisonment. The district court imposed
an upwardly variant sentence of sixty months. Waithe challenges
the procedural and substantive reasonableness of the sentence. We
affirm.
I.
We describe the relevant facts based on undisputed
information from the change of plea hearing, presentence report,
and sentencing hearing. United States v. Spinks, 63 F.4th 95, 97
(1st Cir. 2023).
Waithe is a former All-American college track star who
graduated from Pennsylvania State University in 2016. He worked
as a track and field coach at several colleges after graduating,
including Northeastern University, where he coached from October
2018 through February 2019.
While employed at Northeastern, Waithe frequently asked
female student-athletes on the track and field team to let him use
their cell phones for the stated purpose of "film[ing] their form"
at practices and meets. Once he possessed a team member's phone,
Waithe would search the device for revealing photographs, then
- 2 - covertly send the pictures to himself using the "direct message"
feature on the student's Instagram application. To conceal the
transfer of these photographs, Waithe deleted the messages from
the sent folder on the student's Instagram account before returning
the phone.
About a year after Waithe left Northeastern, he
registered various Instagram accounts under anonymous handles,
including "privacyprotector." Waithe used these accounts to
contact several of the Northeastern athletes from whom he had
stolen nude and semi-nude photographs. Using Instagram's direct
message feature, Waithe falsely informed these women that he had
found revealing photographs of them online and offered to help
scrub such images from the internet. To further this scheme,
Waithe sent the women exemplar pictures of themselves that he
supposedly came across on the internet but that, in fact, were
photographs he had previously stolen directly from their devices.
Waithe then tried to convince his victims to send him additional
revealing photographs so that he could conduct a "reverse image
search," which he claimed would allow him to remove the images
from the internet. In total, Waithe sent over one hundred direct
messages to the female athletes he coached in connection with this
scheme.
Over time, Waithe developed a second scheme for
obtaining revealing photographs. In March 2020, he created two
- 3 - fictious online female personas. Waithe used these personas to
email women living in multiple states regarding a phony "body
development study" for athletes. He offered the women gift cards
in exchange for information concerning their height, weight, body
fat, and diet habits. He also requested that they send him nude
or semi-nude photographs so that the "study" could track their
"progress" and assured the women that their photographs would not
be saved or shared. Waithe obtained over four hundred revealing
photographs from more than thirty women using this scheme.
In addition to tricking women into sharing their
intimate photographs, Waithe conspired with others he met online
to hack into the Snapchat accounts of various young women, many of
whom he knew personally. In May 2020, Waithe posted a message on
a website for "leaked" photographs, i.e., pictures posted to the
internet without the subject's consent, seeking information about
how to hack into a Snapchat account. In October 2020, Waithe
began communicating online with a person who could assist him in
this endeavor. Waithe sent this person information about fifteen
young women, including the victims' Snapchat usernames and
telephone numbers.
Using this information, Waithe's co-conspirator
successfully hacked into a Snapchat account belonging to one of
the female athletes Waithe had coached. After learning about the
successful hack, Waithe exclaimed: "Hell yeah man keep it
- 4 - coming[.] I'll pay you gladly." Waithe later paid his
co-conspirator using Google Pay. He also conspired with several
others he met online to hack into more Snapchat accounts, through
which he obtained images from dozens of additional victims.
After hacking into one former Northeastern
student-athlete's Snapchat account, Waithe began harassing the
woman and her boyfriend from his anonymized "privacyprotector"
account. Waithe sent them several intimate photographs, some of
which he obtained from the student-athlete's hacked Snapchat
account and others he had stolen from her phone when he was her
coach. Waithe told the student-athlete and her boyfriend that
they could help him prevent the images from being posted on the
internet. The messages that Waithe sent included one to the
boyfriend that read: "I want to make you aware that someone hacked
your girlfriend's Snapchat account and will leak it soon. I need
your help to assure [sic] this doesn't happen."
Ultimately, Waithe distributed over the internet some of
the images he obtained from his victims. On one website, Waithe
wrote: "Does anyone want to trade nudes? I'm talking girls you
actually know, it could be ex's [sic] or whatever. I have quite
a few, and I'm down to trade over Snapchat or something." In
another post, Waithe indicated that his collection was "crazy" and
said that some of the photographs were "progress pictures" from
when he used to work as a trainer. In total, Waithe obtained
- 5 - intimate images from fifty-one women and tried to obtain such
images from at least seventy-two others.
Based on the above-described conduct, a grand jury
indicted Waithe on fifteen counts. The first twelve charged
Waithe with wire fraud, 18 U.S.C. § 1343, based on his scheme to
obtain nude or semi-nude pictures from women by offering to help
them remove their "leaked" photographs from the internet and to
participate in the fake "body" study. Count Thirteen charged
Waithe with cyberstalking, 18 U.S.C. § 2261A(2)(B), for his
harassment of the former student-athlete from Northeastern and her
boyfriend. Lastly, Counts Fourteen and Fifteen charged Waithe
with conspiracy to commit computer fraud and aiding and abetting
computer fraud, 18 U.S.C. §§ 371 and 1030(a)(2), (4), for the
Snapchat hacking scheme.
Over the government's objection, a magistrate judge
ordered Waithe released pending trial subject to certain
conditions, including that he not use internet-capable devices.
Waithe violated this condition by logging into his Instagram
account at least 135 times to again request revealing images from
female Instagram users. In one direct message, Waithe offered to
pay a woman to send photographs of herself that he could use to
make drawings for his "portfolio." Specifically, Waithe said that
he "need[ed] a bunch of pictures . . . preferably with [the
woman's] tattoos showing because it makes for much more detail in
- 6 - the drawings," adding: "It wouldn't be posted anywhere or
anything." In another exchange, Waithe offered a different woman
$50 to participate in a "study" that would require providing him
with her "most confident sensual picture." Based on these breaches
of his release conditions, the magistrate judge ordered Waithe
detained pending trial.
Waithe eventually pleaded guilty to all counts without
a plea agreement. Waithe had no prior criminal history and was
thus assigned a criminal history category of I under the sentencing
guidelines. To determine the offense level, Waithe's convictions
were divided into two groups: one for cyberstalking and the other
for wire and computer fraud. See U.S.S.G. § 3D1.1 (setting forth
the procedure for determining the offense level when a defendant
has been convicted of more than one count). The cyberstalking
group produced the highest offense level and thus drove the overall
offense level. See id. §§ 3D1.1(a)(3), 3D1.4. Cyberstalking
carries a base offense level of eighteen. Id. § 2A6.2(a). Waithe
received a two-point upward adjustment for engaging in a pattern
of conduct harassing the same victim, id. § 2A6.2(b)(1)(E), and
another two-point upward adjustment for abusing a position of
trust, id. § 3B1.3. Thus, his total offense level for the
cyberstalking group was twenty-two.
For the wire and computer fraud group, the base offense
level was seven. Id. § 2B1.1. Waithe received three two-point
- 7 - increases because (1) his offenses involved ten or more victims,
id. § 2B1.1(b)(2)(A); (2) he was convicted of an offense under 18
U.S.C. § 1030 that involved obtaining and disseminating personal
information, U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1(b)(18); and (3) he abused a position
of trust, id. § 3B1.3. Waithe also received a three-point
increase for committing the offense using sophisticated means.
Id. § 2B1.1(b)(10)(C). Based on these adjustments, Waithe's total
offense for the wire and computer fraud group was sixteen.
Because the wire and computer fraud group's total
offense level scored between five and eight levels below the
cyberstalking group, an additional level was added to the
cyberstalking group score, thus increasing Waithe's total offense
level to twenty-three. See id. § 3D1.4 (setting forth the
procedure for determining the combined offense level). Waithe
then received a two-point reduction for accepting responsibility,
id. § 3E1.1; a two-point reduction for having no prior criminal
history points, id. § 4C1.1(a), (b); and a one-point reduction for
timely notifying the government of his intent to plead guilty, id.
§ 3E1.1(b). These adjustments resulted in a total offense level
of eighteen and combined with Waithe's criminal history category
of I, yielded an advisory guideline sentencing range of twenty-
seven to thirty-three months of imprisonment. The district court
rejected the government's request for an additional two-point
adjustment for being a leader in the criminal activity, see id.
- 8 - § 3B1.1, and thus used the twenty-seven to thirty-three-month
range as the starting point for its sentencing determination.
Waithe requested a sentence at the bottom of the guideline range
of twenty-seven months, and the government advocated for an
upwardly variant sentence of eighty-four months.
At the sentencing hearing, seven victims provided impact
statements. The victims spoke to the enduring fear and profound
loss of trust they experienced from Waithe's exploitation:
● "I not only lost a best friend, but I also lost the privilege of being able to trust friends or people in general. . . . I am scared about my online accounts. The horrifying truth is that digital is the future, and now I feel like I cannot be a part of that, and I'm being left behind."
● "It has been nothing short of a nightmare since [Waithe] walked into my life. The day he stepped foot on campus my life was changed forever. I will forever live in fear of the trail that follows me because of his actions . . . . Such personal and intimate pieces of myself have been disbursed among strangers and perverted individuals. I have to wonder where these pieces of me have gone and how they could potentially hurt me in the future."
● "[Waithe's] actions tainted my college athletic experience. I struggle trusting authority figures -- coaches, coworkers, bosses. I struggle to accept that I'll never know the true dissemination of my compromised privacy."
● "I have to remind myself that [Waithe's] actions are those of a man who preys on vulnerable young women and betrays their trust. This experience has left me with a
- 9 - lingering sense of doubt, not only in others but myself. . . . I'll never fully regain the person I was before Steve Waithe came into my life."
● "It deeply saddens me that the sport that I loved has been tainted by this experience. . . . I remember the fear and disgust and the sinking feeling in my stomach the first time we were told that we would never know where he has the photos of us."
● "The pain and emotional damage . . . is immeasurable. It has haunted me through every phase of my life . . . I feel constantly violated, used, and fearful, always awaiting his next move."
The government's argument for an eighty-four-month
sentence echoed these themes. The prosecutor emphasized that, as
the coach of these young women, Waithe "was supposed to support,
inspire, and lead," but instead he employed "methodical deception
and exploitation" to "[steal] their most personal and private
photos for his own sexual gratification and to distribute [those
photographs] on the Internet." In support of its requested
sentence, the government stressed the number of victims, the
intimate nature of the crimes, Waithe's persistence in seeking
images even after his arrest, and that he had traded the stolen
images over the internet.
Waithe argued for a bottom-of-the-guideline sentence by
contending that the aggravating factors cited by the government
were already accounted for by the guidelines. Waithe also
identified purportedly comparable cases in which courts had
- 10 - imposed sentences below the government's request. He contended
that his conduct on release could be addressed through a long
supervised-release term and strict conditions. And he added that
accepting the government's request would require the court to "step
outside of the guidelines entirely" and "basically ignore" certain
of the section 3553(a) sentencing factors. See 18 U.S.C.
§ 3553(a) (enumerating factors to be considered in imposing a
sentence).
The district court ultimately decided against imposing
the government's requested sentence. It reasoned that the
guidelines "are an important anchor," and the government's request
was "just too high a jump." The court instead settled on a sixty-
month sentence, which represented a roughly six-level increase to
the guideline range.
To support the upward variance, the district court
focused on the nature and seriousness of the offense. In this
regard, the court emphasized that Waithe had obtained compromising
images from fifty-one victims, which the court described as a
"dramatic increase" from the baseline number of ten victims that
warrants application of the two-level victim enhancement under the
guidelines. See U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1(b)(2)(A) (providing that the
offense level should be increased by two points if the offense
"involved [ten] or more victims"). The court also stressed that
those affected by Waithe's crimes "weren't just victims who lost
- 11 - some money" but rather "people who lost their privacy[,] their
sense of sense of safety," and who had suffered "a destruction of
trust." Finally, the court expressed concern that Waithe engaged
in similar conduct "soon after getting out" on pretrial release.1
After the court announced the sentence, Waithe objected
by stating that "the sentence is unreasonable," and "the variance
is not warranted, especially to that degree in this particular
case." Waithe timely appealed.
II.
Waithe challenges his sentence as procedurally and
substantively unreasonable. Following our typical practice, we
consider first the procedural reasonableness claims. United
States v. Colón-De Jesús, 85 F.4th 15, 20 (1st Cir. 2023).
A.
Procedural sentencing errors include "selecting a
sentence based on clearly erroneous facts" and "failing to
consider" the section 3553(a) sentencing factors. Gall v. United
States, 552 U.S. 38, 51 (2007). Waithe argues that his sentencing
1 The government also contends that the district court relied on Waithe's lack of remorse as a factor supporting an upward variance. We do not read the record to support that contention. While the court stated that it "didn't like" a letter that Waithe had sent the court because it did not convey personal responsibility for the harm he had caused his victims, the court also stated that Waithe's allocution at the sentencing hearing "came a lot closer to doing that." These comments do not suggest that the court increased the sentence it otherwise would have imposed because of an alleged lack of remorse.
- 12 - was infected by one procedural error from each of these categories.
Specifically, he claims that the district court: (1) relied on
clearly erroneous facts by treating his violation of pretrial
release conditions as proof that he committed an additional crime
while on release and (2) failed to consider section 3553(a)(6)'s
mandate to avoid unwarranted sentencing disparities.
When the arguments are preserved, we analyze claims of
procedural error for an abuse of discretion. United States v.
Vargas-Martinez, 15 F.4th 91, 98 (1st Cir. 2021). Waithe contends
that this is the correct standard here because he objected to the
sentence after the district court pronounced it. The government
counters that Waithe's post-sentencing objection was inadequate to
preserve the procedural claims because it was not sufficiently
specific and accordingly argues that plain error review should
apply. We do not need to resolve this dispute because, even giving
Waithe the benefit of the doubt and applying the
abuse-of-discretion standard, we conclude that he is not entitled
to resentencing based on his procedural error claims.
Waithe argues that the district court committed a
procedural error by increasing his sentence based on a belief that
he committed a new crime while on pretrial release. While Waithe
concedes that he violated his release terms by using the internet
to solicit additional images from women and that this conduct was
relevant to the sentencing determination, he contends that the
- 13 - court made an error by treating his violations as if they
constituted an additional crime and that this error infected the
sentencing outcome. In support of this argument, Waithe cites the
court's sentencing-hearing statements that he "did it again when
he was released" and "did it so soon after getting out." Waithe
also highlights the court's written statement of reasons, which
indicated that his "repeating the crime while on pretrial release"
was one of the bases for its variance decision.
Neither party characterized Waithe's release misconduct
as criminal activity in their sentencing memoranda or at the
sentencing hearing. And the district court also did not
explicitly describe it that way in its oral sentencing explanation.
Thus, Waithe's argument asks us to construe the court's hearing
statements that he "did it again" and "did it so soon after getting
out" as tantamount to statements that he committed "the crime"
again based on the written statement of reasons filed after the
hearing. We have been reluctant, however, to find a sentencing
error based on the contents of a written statement of reasons
because the written statement "serves a largely administrative
purpose." United States v. Vázquez–Martínez, 812 F.3d 18, 25 (1st
Cir. 2016); cf. United States v. Morales-Negrón, 974 F.3d 63, 68
(1st Cir. 2020) (rejecting procedural challenge based on alleged
error in written statement of reasons where the defendant
"receive[d] an adequate in-court explanation for the sentence").
- 14 - In any event, Waithe's argument fails for a more
fundamental reason: the sentencing record demonstrates that the
district court primarily relied on Waithe's release misconduct
because of what it suggested about his risk of recidivism, not
because it necessarily constituted a separate crime. Waithe
himself admitted that his release misconduct was "disturbing."
And the court agreed, observing that the release misconduct
suggested that Waithe suffered from "obsessiveness" and failed to
appreciate the gravity of his conduct and its impact on his
victims.
It was these concerns -- that Waithe, while facing
federal charges and the threat of incarceration, would engage in
behavior like the offense conduct -- that caused the district
court to identify potential recidivism as a basis for an upward
variance. Such concerns would exist to a similar degree even if
Waithe's efforts to obtain compromising images from women while on
release failed to satisfy all the elements of a particular offense.
Based on the "full context" of the district court's sentencing
explanation, it is apparent that the court viewed Waithe's release
misconduct as an aggravating factor regardless of whether the
conduct met the definition of a separate crime. See United States
v. Carmona-Alomar, 109 F.4th 60, 71 (1st Cir. 2024) (stating that
a reviewing court must "consider the statement by the [d]istrict
- 15 - [c]ourt that is at issue in its full context and not in
isolation").
For his second procedural error claim, Waithe faults the
district court for failing to adequately account for 18 U.S.C.
§ 3553(a)(6), which requires a sentencing court to consider "the
need to avoid unwarranted sentence disparities among defendants
with similar records who have been found guilty of similar
conduct." Waithe contends that the court failed to meaningfully
distinguish a series of cases in which courts sentenced defendants
to fewer than sixty months of imprisonment for obtaining
compromising images through the internet. According to the
Waithe, the court categorically rejected the proposed comparator
cases based solely on the number of victims impacted by his crimes.
Waithe argues that this reasoning was unsound because many of the
comparator cases he identified involved a greater number of victims
than those involved here.
This argument fails because it does not address the
district court's full explanation for discounting the proposed
comparator cases. It is true that the court indicated that
Waithe's case involved a much "broader" set of victims than the
cited cases and that, in terms of raw numbers, some of Waithe's
proposed comparator cases involved more victims. See, e.g.,
United States v. Majercyzk, No. 1:16-cr-00550 (N.D. Ill. filed
Jan. 18, 2017) (defendant sentenced to nine months of incarceration
- 16 - for sophisticated hacking scheme that permitted him to hack into
the email accounts of over three hundred victims); United States
v. Moore, No. 2:13-cr-917 (C.D. Cal. filed Dec. 20, 2013)
(defendant sentenced to thirty months of incarceration for his
role in running a website that disseminated nude photographs from
the hacked accounts of hundreds of victims). But the court
continued its reasoning in its very next sentence, adding that
Waithe's victims lost more than "some money": "These were people
who lost their privacy and their sense of safety, and really a
destruction of trust."
The district court thus discounted Waithe's proposed
comparator cases based not just on the number of victims involved
but also the types of victims. Many of Waithe's victims were not
strangers to him; rather, they were women over whom Waithe had
occupied a position of power. As their coach, Waithe used that
power to steal their intimate images for his own gratification
and, later, used those stolen photographs as leverage to obtain
additional compromising images. The court justifiably viewed the
nature of the victim-defendant relationship as an aggravating
factor that distinguished this case from those cited by Waithe,
most of which involved anonymous computer-hacking scenarios.
In short, when reading the district court's entire
explanation, it is evident that the court considered the need to
avoid unwarranted sentencing disparities under section 3553(a)(6).
- 17 - The court simply evaluated that factor differently than Waithe
would have hoped. Such a disagreement is no basis for relief.
See United States v. Reyes-Rivera, 812 F.3d 79, 90 (1st Cir. 2016)
(rejecting similar claim because the "district court plainly
considered [the] section 3553(a)(6) argument, and . . . gave an
adequate explanation for why [the defendant's] case was not in the
same camp as those he offered" (quotation marks and citation
omitted)); United States v. Garcia-Ortiz, 792 F.3d 184, 192 (1st
Cir. 2015) (similar).
B.
We complete our analysis by addressing Waithe's
challenge to the substantive reasonableness of his sentence.
Waithe preserved this claim. We therefore review for an abuse of
discretion. United States v. Soto-Soto, 855 F.3d 445, 450 (1st
Cir. 2017).
Because selecting a sentence requires a nuanced
judgment, there is no single correct sentence in any case but
rather "a universe of reasonable sentencing outcomes." United
States v. Clogston, 662 F.3d 588, 592 (1st Cir. 2023). We will
consider a sentence to fall within that universe so long as the
district court provides a "plausible sentencing rationale and a
defensible result." United States v. Flores-Nater, 62 F.4th 652,
655 (1st Cir. 2023) (quoting United States v. Díaz-Lugo, 963 F.3d
- 18 - 145, 157 (1st Cir. 2020)). Waithe contends that the district
court provided neither.
We begin with the district court's explanation for the
sixty-month sentence, which constituted a twenty-seven-month
upward variance.2 "Where, as here, the district court imposes an
upwardly variant sentence, it must explain its reasons for doing
so." Id. The court's burden of explanation "increases in
proportion to the extent of [its] deviation from the guideline
range." United States v. Montero-Montero, 817 F.3d 35, 37 (1st
Cir. 2016). Thus, a greater variance requires a commensurately
more compelling justification. Flores-Nater, 62 F.4th at 656.
That said, we do not require a court to "follow any particular
format in explaining an upwardly variant sentence." Id. at 656.
And, in some cases, a review of the record may help illuminate the
court's rationale. Montero-Montero, 817 F.3d at 38. Thus, "[i]t
is enough if the explanation can be gleaned 'by fair inference'
from the sentencing record." Flores-Nater, 62 F.4th at 656
(quoting United States v. Ortiz-Pérez, 30 F.4th 107, 114 (1st Cir.
2022)).
As Waithe correctly points out, the district court's
rationale for its upward variance focused primarily on the
2An inadequate-explanation claim may be presented as either a procedural or substantive error but need only be examined once in reviewing the sustainability of a sentence. See United States v. García Pérez, 9 F.4th 48, 52 n.1 (1st Cir. 2021).
- 19 - inadequacy of the guideline range for the conduct underlying the
wire and computer fraud charges.3 Specifically, the court zeroed
in on the "nature and seriousness" of Waithe's fraud conduct. The
court noted that Waithe's scheme succeeded against fifty-one women
and that he had attempted the crime against seventy-two others -- a
"dramatic increase" from the ten-victim baseline for an upward
adjustment under section 2B1.1(b)(2)(A)(i).
A "district court may rely on factors already considered
in constructing the guideline sentencing range as long as it
explains how the guidelines do not 'sufficiently account[] for the
idiosyncrasies of a particular case.'" United States v. Leach,
89 F.4th 189, 197 (1st Cir. 2023) (alteration in original) (quoting
Díaz-Lugo, 963 F.3d at 156). The court's conclusion that the
number of victims here far exceeded the threshold number to trigger
an enhancement provides a reasonable basis for sentencing above
Waithe counters that it is common in online fraud cases
for there to be many victims and thus the victim count does not
remove this case "from the mine-run of cases under [the]
3 Waithe says that means we should judge the reasonableness of the variance by using the guideline range for the fraud group (twenty-one to twenty-seven months) rather than the higher range applicable to the cyberstalking group, which established the range the court treated as applicable. Even assuming that is the correct mode of analysis, using the lower starting point would not change our conclusion.
- 20 - guideline[s]." But even accepting that general observation,
Waithe's argument fails when we read the district court's
sentencing rationale in a "practical, common-sense manner."
Díaz-Lugo, 963 F.3d at 156.
The district court's full explanation demonstrates that
it was concerned not only with the number of victims but also with
who they were and how Waithe defrauded them. As already mentioned,
the court noted that these victims endured violations of "their
privacy and [] sense of safety" when Waithe leveraged his power
over them to obtain their intimate pictures. The court's
explanation emphasized the substance of the victim impact
statements, which supported the court's belief that Waithe's
conduct constituted a "very serious offense." Waithe's offense
conduct featured multiple aggravating factors -- namely, his close
relationship with many of his victims, his exploitation of those
relationships over many months to obtain sexually revealing images
of those women, and his swapping of some of those images over the
internet -- for which there is no corresponding enhancement in the
guideline regime for fraud offenses. See Leach, 89 F.4th at 199
(stating that it is permissible for the district court to consider
"the real-world context" of an offense in imposing an upward
variance).
In addition, the district court permissibly referenced
Waithe's misconduct on pretrial release, which demonstrated a
- 21 - worrisome "obsessiveness." Such conduct suggested the need for
additional specific deterrence and public protection, which are
section 3553(a) factors that may call for an above-guideline
sentence. See 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(2)(B), (C).
To be sure, the district court did not provide a long
explanation for imposing the variant sentence. But there is no
requirement that it do so. See United State v. Del Valle-
Rodríguez, 761 F.3d 171, 177 (1st Cir. 2014) ("[A] sentencing
court's obligation to explain a variance requires the court to
offer a plausible and coherent rationale -- but it does not require
the court to be precise to the point of pedantry."). The record
indicates that the court sentenced Waithe above the guideline range
because of (1) the seriousness of his offenses, as demonstrated by
the number of victims, his relationship to those victims, and the
lasting fear and violations of trust those victims suffered because
of his crimes, and (2) Waithe's release misconduct, which
heightened recidivism concerns and thus created the need for
additional specific deterrence and public protection. The court
concisely explained the need for the upwardly variant sentence
based on these section 3553(a) considerations, which were not
adequately captured by the guideline range. No more is required.
We also hold that the district court's bottom-line
conclusion was reasonable. As the court explained, Waithe's
crimes were not about money; they were about an exploitation of
- 22 - trust -- something that cannot be restored through restitution.
The victims provided powerful statements about their lasting
trauma from Waithe's conduct, with some victims expressing a fear
that they may never recover. The court reasonably relied on these
statements to find that Waithe had engaged in "very serious" crimes
and posed a recidivist threat. These considerations place a
sixty-month sentence within the universe of reasonable outcomes.
III.
For the reasons stated, Waithe's sentence is affirmed.
- 23 -