United States v. Robert S. Gordon

I concur in the majority opinion, with the exception of parts II, B-l and II, B-4, as to which I dissent.

Congress did, no doubt, want to help make victims of crimes whole when it enacted 18 U.S.C. § 3663A. However, Congress also hoped to avoid creating a system that would, essentially, turn criminal sentencing hearings into complicated, prolonged trials of the normal civil variety. See 18 U.S.C. § 3663A(c)(3)(B). Therefore, Congress did not provide that a victim could simply recover the damages that would, or might, be available in a typical civil case. Rather, when it came to defining the…