Search

Compassionate release, guided by 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A), allows a district court to reduce a previously imposed criminal sentence if "extraordinary and compelling reasons" warrant a reduction. Congress delegated the task of describing what constitutes an extraordinary and compelling reason to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Following the passage of the First Step Act of 2018, most circuit courts held the Commission's policy statement describing extraordinary and compelling reasons inapplicable, and that until the Commission updated its policy statement, courts enjoyed the discretion to determine what circumstances justify compassionate release. Many have celebrated this newfound discretion and its potential to expand individuals' ability to receive compassionate release. However, judicial discretion, though valuable in many ways, inevitably leads to disagreement and disparity. Perhaps unsurprisingly, circuit courts have disagreed on whether certain circumstances could, as a matter of law, justify a grant of compassionate release, causing geographic disparity in individuals' ability to receive compassion. In April 2023, the Commission updated its policy statement and included a catchall provision codifying judicial discretion and, unless the Commission acts, the disparity that discretion invites. This Comment argues that for judicial discretion to improve compassionate release, the Commission must take an active role in overseeing judicial discretion so that compassionate release can enjoy the benefits of that discretion without accepting the disparity discretion often creates. Specifically, it argues the Commission, through its statutory authority to describe what should be considered an extraordinary and compelling reason, can resolve current and future circuit splits over what constitutes an extraordinary and compelling reason by promulgating amended policy statements expressly including, or excluding, the disputed circumstance in its description of extraordinary and compelling reasons. In doing so, the Commission would effectively erase circuit courts' contrary interpretations of extraordinary and compelling reasons and thereby end the regional "droughts of compassion" the current approach to judicial discretion allows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many states in the United States have recently implemented voter suppression policies, which make voting more difficult, particularly for members of marginalized populations (e.g. non-white and female voters). In this article, we examine how these policies and other measures of political climate influence criminal sentencing in US district courts. Using 2015 data from the US Sentencing Commission, alongside other district-level measures, we find both direct and conditioning relationships between political climate and extra-legal variables. Specifically, we find that, while voter suppression policies do not directly affect sentence length, racial threat effects are enhanced in districts governed by such policies. Conversely, districts without such policies see larger mitigating effects at high levels of ethnic diversity and gender equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every federal circuit, in one form or another, gives cognizable deference to the United States Sentencing Commission. The presumption of reasonableness that appellate courts apply to sentences falling within the Commission's Sentencing Guidelines represents the most popular iteration of this deference. However, deference to the Commission--whether in the form of a presumption, or otherwise--is problematic. Examination of the justifications and effects of the presumption shows that it is the functional equivalent of Chevron deference. Further examination shows that such de facto deference is unjustified. The Commission's expertise is redundant to, and less than, that of Article III courts. Additionally, notions of lenity counsel against deference in a setting where the government acts at its fullest power. Appellate courts should remove any aspect of deference from their jurisprudence and strive toward a robust sentencing review. Holistic review of federal sentences will achieve the happy result of additional guidance to district courts, increased uniform and well-justified sentences, and an affirmance of the judiciary's power over the cases and controversies of the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various developments involving American criminal sentencing law and the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the 2005 case United States v. Booker which deals with the Sixth Amendment to the nation's Constitution and an enhanced sentence based on a judge's determination of a fact that was not found by the jury or admitted by the defendant. District courts in Florida and U.S. Probation Office investigation reports are examined.

Objectives: The federal sentencing guidelines constrain decision makers' discretion to consider offenders' life histories and current circumstances, including their histories of drug use and drug use at the time of the crime. However, the situation is complicated by the fact that judges are required to take the offender's drug use into account in making bail and pretrial detention decisions and the ambiguity inherent in decisions regarding substantial assistance departures allows consideration of this factor. In this paper we build upon and extend prior research examining the impact of an offender's drug use on sentences imposed on drug trafficking offenders. Methods: We used data from three U.S. District Courts and a methodologically sophisticated approach (i.e., path analysis) to test for the direct and indirect (i.e., through pretrial detention and receipt of a substantial assistance departure) effects of an offender's drug use history and use of drug at the time of the crime, to determine if the effects of drug use varies by the type of drug, and to test for the moderating effect of type of crime. Results: We found that although the offender's history of drug use did not affect sentence length, offenders who were using drugs at the time of the crime received longer sentences both as a direct consequence of their drug use and because drug use at the time of the crime increased the odds of pretrial detention and increased the likelihood of receiving a substantial assistance departure. We also found that the effects of drug use varied depending on whether the offender was using crack cocaine or some other drug and that the type of offense for which the offender was convicted moderated these relationships. Conclusions: Our findings illustrate that there is a complex array of relationships between drug use and key case processing decisions in federal courts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of mass immigration from Latin America, legal scholars have shifted focus from racial to ethnic inequality under the law. A series of studies now suggest that Hispanics may be the most disadvantaged group in U. S. courts, yet this body of work has yet to fully engage the role of citizenship status. The present research examines the punishment consequences for non- U. S. citizens sentenced in federal courts between 1992 and 2009. Drawing from work in citizenship studies and sociolegal inequality, I hypothesize that nonstate members will be punished more severely than U. S. citizens, and any trends in Hispanic ethnicity over this period will be linked to punitive changes in the treatment of noncitizens. In line with this hypothesis, results indicate a considerable punishment gap between citizens and noncitizens-larger than minority-white disparities. Additionally, this citizenship 'penalty' has increased at the incarceration stage, explaining the majority of the increase in Hispanic-white disparity over the past two decades. As international migration increases, these findings call for greater theoretical and empirical breadth in legal inequality research beyond traditional emphases, such as race and ethnicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the factors that motivate the increase of child pornography (CP) in the U.S. The author mentions a study that determines the mismatch between the sentencing guidelines' recommendation for CP offenses and actual preferences in district courts, resulting to the increase of cases sentenced in federal courts. He recommends the need for courts to give the guideline a substantial weight on their sentencing decisions to provide reasonableness standard in such cases.

In 2007, after years of dissatisfaction with the 100-to-1 disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine, the U.S. Sentencing Commission amended the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, reducing by two levels the base offense level assigned to threshold quantities of crack cocaine. The amendment was subsequently made retroactive, which required the federal courts to process approximately 20,000 prisoner motions for sentence reduction. Using data collected from a case study of one particular district as well as a survey of representatives from the 94 federal judicial districts, this study examines the process of “crack retroactivity” implementation. The authors found that court communities varied greatly with respect to their organizational arrangements, procedures, and motivations. Although U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services played an important role in every district, how and why districts organized to respond to crack retroactivity varied. The study findings also indicate that sentencing procedures may be another mechanism through which location affects sentencing outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to determine whether offenders’ history of hard drug use and hard drug use at the time of the crime affect case outcomes for offenders in three federal district courts. We focus on three outcomes—whether the offender was in pretrial detention prior to adjudication, whether the offender received a downward departure for providing substantial assistance, and the length of the sentence imposed on offenders who were sentenced to prison—and we hypothesize that the offender’s history of drug use and drug use at the time of the crime will have varying effects on the three outcomes. Our results reveal that use of illegal drugs had multifaceted, but not illogical, effects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the pre-sentence duties of probation officers as investigator and their authority in the sentencing process. It talks about the split among the U.S. circuit courts of appeals regarding appropriate delegation of judicial authority to probation officers for district courts. It highlights that the court should delegate to probation officers the authority to determine drug tests and mental health treatments within timing and monthly installment restitution payments.

The article reviews selective assault on sentencing discretion in the Eleventh Circuit decision in U.S. v. Irey. It explores the mistakes in Irey and attempts to locate each within the broader context of the Eleventh Circuit's sentencing jurisprudence. According to the article, the Eleventh Court decision represents a serious and unlawful encroachment on district court's sentencing discretion, based on misguided notion of culpability which renders lasting impact on district courts to sentence defendants more harshly particularly for sexual offense.

One of the important goals of the federal sentencing guidelines was to reduce inter-judge disparity in sentencing. In this paper, we test the assumption that structuring discretion produced uniformity in federal sentencing and consistency in the process by which judges arrive at the appropriate sentence. We also examine whether background characteristics of judges affect the sentences they impose on similarly situated offenders. We used hierarchical linear modeling, nesting the offenders in the judges that sentenced them in order to examine the sentencing decisions of federal judges in three U.S. District Courts. While we found that significant variation between judges in sentencing is largely accounted for by our level 1 characteristics, we also found that judges arrive at decisions regarding the appropriate sentence in different ways, by attaching differential weights to several of the legally relevant case characteristics and legally irrelevant offender characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research examining disparities in sentencing outcomes under federal sentencing guidelines has focused almost exclusively on aggregate national data. Although these studies contribute considerably to the criminological literature on sentencing disparity, their findings may have masked contextual variation in relation to case processing across jurisdictions. With data from the U.S. District Courts for Minnesota, Nebraska, and Southern Iowa for 1998 through 2000, this article assesses whether interdistrict variations in sentence outcomes exist and whether the factors that affect these outcomes vary across jurisdictions. It also attempts to determine whether disparities in sentence outcomes can be attributed to downward departures. The findings raise questions about the validity of the assumption of uniformity in the federal sentencing process and the use of aggregate data to study federal sentence outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship on criminal punishments increasingly highlights the importance of courtroom social contexts. Combining recent data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission (FY1997–2000) with aggregate data on federal districts, the current study examines interdistrict variations in the application of downward departures from the federal sentencing guidelines. Findings indicate that substantial variation exists in the probability of both prosecutor-initiated substantial assistance departures and judge-initiated downward departures. This variation is accounted for, in part, by organizational court contexts, such as caseload pressures, and by environmental considerations, such as the racial composition of the district. Additional evidence suggests that individual trial penalties and race disparities are conditioned by aggregate court contexts. Drawing on interviews with federal justice personnel, this article concludes with a discussion of future directions for research on federal guidelines departures. Part of the glory of the federal system...is that you've got this one big organization, but it can be molded to different needs... - An assistant U.S. attorney - [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]