j u s t c r i m

crack sentencing

People in the  know suggest the Dillon crack radioactivity decision might just get released by SCOTUS tomorrow ... Let's review ... The LII / Legal Information Institute (Cornell) liibulletin piece summarizes beautifully:

Dillon v. United States (09-6338)

Appealed from the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (June 10, 2009)

Oral argument: March 30, 2010

FEDERAL SENTENCING GUIDELINES, BOOKER

In 1993, Petitioner Percy Dillon was tried and convicted in federal court for possession of crack cocaine and was sentenced to 322 months in prison under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. Subsequently, the Supreme Court determined in United States v. Booker that the Guidelines were only advisory, not mandatory, and Congress retroactively reduced the Guideline range for crack cocaine offenses. Dillon filed a motion to have his sentence retroactively reduced, and argued that under Booker the Guidelines are not binding on his resentencing. The district court rejected this view, and reduced Dillon’s sentence to 277 under the new Guidelines. The Third Circuit affirmed, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve the issue of whether the Federal Sentencing Guidelines are binding or merely advisory on retroactive sentence reductions... [RESTOFliibulletin]

us sentencing commission survey

United States Sentencing Commission (http://www.ussc.gov/)

Results of Survey of United States District Judges: January 2010 through March 2010

The United States Sentencing Commission undertook to survey all United States district court judges concerning their views and opinions on a wide range of sentencing policy issues... [full text]  [via Sentencing Law and Policy]
 

"american inquisition" | life under the thumb of the federal sentencing guidelines

Bascuas, Ricardo J., The American Inquisition: Sentencing after the Federal Guidelines (September 5, 2009). Wake Forest Law Review, Vol. 45, pp. 1-78, 2010. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1468887

ABSTRACT:   Despite the series of important Supreme Court sentencing decisions of the past ten years, federal sentencing remains fundamentally inquisitorial. Although the guidelines are no longer legally binding, they continue to taint the entire federal criminal justice system by needlessly discouraging defendants from exercising their trial right and pressuring them to confess. Their continued vitality is largely due to Justice Breyer’s persistent view, first as one of the architects of the original guidelines and later as a Supreme Court justice, that sentencing is an administrative problem requiring an administrative solution. The heart of this solution is that the facts of each case and the appropriate punishment are to be determined not through the parties’ competing presentations, but through a probation officer’s purportedly 'neutral' investigation. This method of resolving factual issues, together with the guidelines’ harsh penalties for invoking the right to trial and lavish rewards for incriminating others, result in a system that is not only unfair but also intrinsically incompatible with our adversarial system of justice. Existing scholarship on the Federal Sentencing Guidelines has not examined how the guidelines purposefully discourage exercise of the right to trial and pressure defendants to admit to every allegation against them (and others). The central role that the United States Probation Office plays has also not been thoroughly examined. Far from undertaking merely ministerial and innocuous tasks, as most of the existing scholarship assumes, probation officers are tasked by the guidelines with the most critical role at sentencing. Often, they exert far greater influence on case outcomes than defense lawyers and prosecutors. The article concludes that the present sentencing process is unconstitutional but can be easily reformed by restoring control over each case to the parties.