« Ind. Courts - "Chief Floyd County probation officer cited in sexual harassment lawsuit" | Main | Environment - More on: City of Richmond may soon own contaminated Dana site »

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Courts - "7th Circuit Chief Judge Calls for Loosening of Sentencing Guidelines"

Lynne Marek has this report in The National Law Journal, dated Sept. 14th. It begins:

Judge Frank Easterbrook urged the U.S. Sentencing Commission on Wednesday to loosen the federal sentencing guidelines so that judges waste less time in precisely determining ranges that may not matter anyway.

In testimony before the commission in Chicago, Easterbrook, chief judge of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said the commission's "most important current task" is revamping the structure of the guidelines in light of the U.S. Supreme Court decisions that made the guidelines merely advisory. Now that judges can sentence outside the ranges set by the guideline tables, he said, they shouldn't be spending so much time calculating those ranges in the first place.

Easterbrook had two specific proposals. First, the ranges should be made longer -- currently, a 25 percent spread is allowed between the number of months at the bottom and the number of months at the top of the range. Second, the ranges should overlap with each other more so that the possible prison times in one range overlap more with the possible prison times in the next most lenient and the next harshest ranges.

"These two changes will reduce the need to make precise findings that do not affect the outcome, and thus save time for both district and appellate judges without sacrificing any of the statutory goals," Easterbrook said.

Even under advisory guidelines, district judges are still required to calculate an appropriate range before using their own discretion in determining a sentence. Likewise, appellate judges must still make sure that the range calculation was done correctly even when a sentence is outside the range.

Here is a story dated Sept. 11 in the Washington Post, by Kari Lydersen, headed "U.S. Sentencing Commission Urged to Give Judges More Flexibility." The story begins:
CHICAGO, Sept. 10 -- Advocates for added flexibility in criminal sentencing took their appeal to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which heard testimony here Wednesday and Thursday as part of the agency's first nationwide series of public hearings since federal sentencing guidelines took effect 22 years ago.

Criminal justice reform proponents have long pushed the federal government to back alternatives to incarceration and more flexible sentencing for drug, child pornography and other convictions. While past critics of federal guidelines criticized them for removing judges' discretion, others in law enforcement and advocacy want to use the guidelines to promote alternative sentencing. They said they think the commission is increasingly receptive to that idea.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 12, 2009 11:50 AM
Posted to Courts in general