A district judge's perspective on post-Booker sentencing

In this post, I noted that, at the conclusion of a panel on federal sentencing at the Sixth Circuit Judicial Conference that I participated in June, James Carr, the Chief Judge of the US District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, rose from the audience to share great insights about how judges and policy-makers should look at the post-Booker world.  Chief Judge Carr has turned those remarks into an article to appear in a coming issue of the Federal Sentencing Reporter.  I can now make Chief Judge Carr's important and insightful article, entitled "Some Thoughts about Post-Booker Sentencing," available for downloading below.  Here is the article's opening:

Those who believe that the Supreme Court's restoration of considerable, but by no means absolute, judicial discretion and control over sentences is sensible, sound, and wise — and worth preserving — should respond vigorously to demands to reinstate the pre-Booker regime, or institute an even more restrictive sentencing structure.  They should begin doing so, moreover, earlier rather than later so that public discussion, once it begins in earnest, may more likely involve thorough consideration of the premises underlying, purposes for, and consequences of particular legislative proposals.

Any discussion of sentencing post-Booker should, moreover, look beyond simply the number of departures and deviations from Guideline sentences and the extent to which the rate of departures and deviations may be increasing. Comprehensive evaluation of sentencing under Booker must take into account several considerations. The following seem to me to be among them.

Download carr_fsr_piece_on_booker.pdf