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January 20, 2020

Recalling on-going work of the US Sentencing Commission as I continue to troll for "Reflections on Booker at 15"

In this post last weekend, I noted (1) that it is now a full 15 years since the Supreme Court (not-so-)radically transformed the federal sentencing system through its ruling in Booker v. United States, and (2) that it seems I may be one of the few to now note (or even realize) that we have passed another big milestone in the history of the federal sentencing system.  Though I have not yet received any "Reflections on Booker at 15" in response to my prior post, a reliable source reminded me that the US Sentencing Commission has an on-going series of reports that serve to update the system-wide Booker analysis that the USSC completed in its reports to Congress in 2006 and 2012.

To aid review and reflections, here are links to the USSC's 2006 and 2012 Booker reports and to its notable follow-up work from the last few years:

  1. Report on the Impact of United States v. Booker on Federal Sentencing (March 2006).

  2. Report on the Continuing Impact of United States v. Booker on Federal Sentencing (December 2012)

  3. Demographic Differences in Sentencing: An Update of the 2012 Booker Report  (November 2017)

  4. Intra-City Differences in Federal Sentencing Practices (January 2019)

The same reliable source told me that the Commission is nearing completion on another post-Booker report to be released shortly (and this report will also outline other on-going USSC work in this arena).  If this new Commission report ends up having some provocative findings, perhaps there will be some notable "Booker at 15" talk in the offing.

Prior related post:

January 20, 2020 at 02:59 PM | Permalink

Comments

The Booker system continues to violate Apprendi because judges can trigger effective mandatory minimums by finding facts that make lower sentences "unreasonably" low. Or they can raise the effective sentencing maximum by finding facts without which the sentence would be "unreasonably" high. Appellate judges shouldn't be able to look at facts sentencing judges find when analyzing substantive reasonableness.

Posted by: Avi | Jan 20, 2020 7:30:37 PM

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