US Sentencing Commission soon to begin second set of public hearings on proposed guideline amendments

As first flagged in this post a couple of weeks ago, for sentencing fans looking for binge-worthy viewing and reading, the U.S. Sentencing Commission is still in the midst of its series of public hearings concerning  its many proposed amendments to the US Sentencing Guidelines.  The first hearings, which took place on February 23 and 24, can still be watched in full via the now-achieved live-streamed recording at this link.  That link also has all the witness written testimony for a full 25 witnesses for the first two days of public hearings where "the Commission [received] testimony on proposed amendments to the federal sentencing guidelines related to Compassionate Release, Sex Abuse of a Ward, and Acquitted Conduct."

The second set of hearing as this week, taking place on  March 7 and 8, and the link here where folks can live-stream all the action explains that the "purpose of the public hearing is for the Commission to receive testimony on proposed amendments related to Firearms, Fake Pills and the First Step Act-Drug Offenses, Circuit Conflicts, Career Offender, and Criminal History."  For these two days, it appears that there is again another 25 witnesses scheduled to testify on all these topics, and it appears that all their written testimony is already linked.   And again, the Commission will be engaging with a bunch of big policy questions along with lots and lots of (consequential) guideline technicalities. 

Among the many reasons the Commission has such a challenging job, on one issue they have to work with (or around) a recent Supreme Court cert grant.  As the Commission has rightly noted in proposed amendments, the FIRST STEP Act's new safety-valve provision for sentencing in drug cases ought to be incorporated into the the guidelines in some way.  But the circuit courts are deeply divided on the interpretation of that statutory provision, which produced, as noted here, the SCOTUS cert grant in was Pulsifer v. United States.  But that case will not be argued until this coming fall, and very likely will not result in a SCOTUS ruling until probably Spring 2024.  The Commission can amend the guideline before and/or after the SCOTUS ruling, but should it try to guess where SCOTUS will go or instead try to now develop a guideline that can function independent from the statutory debate.

A few recent related posts:

• US Sentencing Commissions publishes proposed guideline amendments and issues for comment 
• US Sentencing Commission to begin series of public hearings on its proposed guideline amendments
• SCOTUS grants certiorari to review reach of FIRST STEP Act's expansion of statutory safety valve