Sentencing Law and Policy

After arguments in quite a SCOTUS Term, another call for papers for FSR issue on "Booker at 20"

Based on parts of yesterday's SCOTUS oral argument that I was able to hear on the road and then various subsequent press reports, it sure sounds like one particularly high-profile federal defendant is poised to get at least a partial victory from the US Supreme Court on his immunity claims.  More broadly, as the Justices now turn from oral arguments to completing and releasing opinions, I surmise there will likely be any number of big criminal law decisions in addition to Trump v. US that will be historic and consequential for many years as the Court wraps up its OT23. 

At the risk of trying to turn every story into a sentencing story, I cannot help up use recent events to flag again that we are approaching the 20th anniversary of what I would call the most consequential of all SCOTUS rulings for federal defendants.  Booker's landmark change to federal sentencing procedure impacts every one of tens of thousands of federal criminal cases each year even before indictment and certainly following any conviction.  And, as flagged in this post last month, there is call for papers for a forthcoming issue of the Federal Sentencing Reporter to note (and celebrate? criticize?) the federal sentencing system's 20 years of functioning under the rules created in Booker.  I previously threatened to repost this call every few weeks, and is am keeing to the threat by winding down a busy week with these shortened specifics:

Nearly 20 years have passed since Booker, and the editors of the Federal Sentencing Reporter are eager to invite judges, lawyers, other sentencing practitioners, legal academics, and sentencing researchers, to share thoughts on “Booker at 20” for publication in an early 2025 FSR issue.  FSR commentaries for this issue could tackle foundational issues (such as the Court’s ruling in Booker and follow-up cases), discrete application issues (such as why certain advisory guidelines are more likely to be followed or ignored), institutional concerns (such as how Congress and the Commission and the Justice Department have responded to Booker), or any other topic of interest or concern to modern federal sentencing policy and practice.  FSR welcomes commentaries from all perspectives, including insights from sentencing experiences (with or without guidelines) in the states and other countries.  Everyone with an informed interest in sentencing law and practice is encouraged to submit a commentary.

FSR articles are typically brief — 2000 to 5000 words, though they can run longer — with relatively light use of citations.  The pieces are designed to be read by busy stakeholders, including lawyers, judges, scholars, and legislators (as well as, of course, members and staff of the US Sentencing Commission).  Priority will be given to drafts submitted by May 28, 2024, and later submissions will be considered as space permits.  Submissions should be sent electronically to [email protected] with a clear indication of the author and the author’s professional affiliation.

"Do progressive prosecutors increase crime? A quasi-experimental analysis of crime rates in the 100 largest counties, 2000–2020"

The title of this post is the title of this new research paper authored by Nick Petersen, Ojmarrh Mitchell and Shi Yan just published in the journal of Criminology and Public Policy. Here is its abstract:

Research summary

In recent years, there has been a rise in so-called “progressive prosecutors” focused on criminal justice reforms. Although there has been considerable debate about the relationship between progressive prosecution policies and crime rates, there has been surprisingly little empirical research on the topic.  Building on the limited extant research, we examined whether the inauguration of progressive prosecutors in the nation's 100 most populous counties impacted crime rates during a 21-year period (2000 to 2020).  After developing an original database of progressive prosecutors in the 100 largest counties, we used heterogeneous difference-in-differences regressions to examine the influence of progressive prosecutors on crime rates.  Results show that the inauguration of progressive prosecutors led to statistically higher index property (∼7%) and total crime rates (driven by rising property crimes), and these effects were strongest since 2013 — a period with an increasing number of progressive prosecutors.  However, violent crime rates generally were not higher after a progressive prosecutor assumed control.

Policy implications

Despite concerns that the election of progressive prosecutors leads to “surging” levels of violence, these findings suggest that progressive-oriented prosecutorial reforms led to relatively higher rates of property crime but had limited impact on rates of violent crime.  In fact, in absolute terms, crime rates fell in jurisdictions with traditional and progressive prosecutors.  Yet, relative property crime rates were greater after the inauguration of progressive prosecutors.  Given that prior research shows progressive prosecutors reduce mass incarceration and racial inequalities, our findings indicate that higher property crime rates may be the price for these advancements.

Kim Kardashian shows her criminal justice reform advocacy is bipartisan

Kim Kardashian used her celebrity status to push President Trump toward criminal justice reform in various way, and today she found her way back to the White House to keep pushing for reforms. This CNN article provides some details:

Kim Kardashian joined Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House on Thursday for a roundtable to discuss pardons issued by President Joe Biden - the latest inroad the reality star has made into national criminal justice policy.

The conversation came a day after the president issued pardons for 11 people and commuted the sentences of five others who had been convicted of non-violent drug offenses.

The forum included several people who were pardoned on Wednesday – Jason Hernandez, Bobby Darrell Lowery, Jesse Mosley and Beverly Holcy – who discussed their experiences with the justice system. All four started businesses or non-profits in their communities after their incarceration....

Harris thanked Kardashian, who visited the White House multiple times during the Trump administration to push for criminal justice reform, for her advocacy and for “using your platform in a way that has really lifted up the importance of talking about and being dedicated to second chances.” “I’m just here to help and to spread the word,” Kardashian said, before telling the pardon recipients she was “so excited to be here to hear your stories.”

Harris also used the event to announce the finalization of a new rule removing most restrictions on loans through the Small Business Administration based on a person’s criminal record.

Mosley, one of the roundtable participants, said he felt “overwhelming gratitude for being one of the few that they did pardon.” “Now I’m sitting at the table with the VP and Kim K.,” he said.

Kardashian said sharing personal stories helps people who have not been in the criminal justice system understand the challenges of reentering society after incarceration. “Every time I’ve gone and visited a prison, I’ve met some of the smartest individuals with the brightest ideas and to see the changes that are happening to make their reentry easier, I think, is going to be life changing and give so many people hope,” Kardashian said.

In 2018, Kardashian sat down with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, where she was joined by Alice Marie Johnson, whose life sentence was commuted by Trump in 2018 on the heels of the reality TV star’s advocacy. In 2019, she delivered remarks from the White House East Room on a new initiative aimed at helping former inmates get jobs out of prison. She met with Trump at the White House again in 2020.

Kardashian’s advocacy has been credited in part with opening the former president up to the idea of criminal justice reform, eventually leading to the passage of the First Step Act in 2018. The prison-reform law marked a rare moment of bipartisanship during Trump’s presidency, and even some of his harshest critics have lauded its passage.

"The Relevance of State Misconduct for Mitigating Individual Punishment"

The title of this post is the title of this book chapter authored by Thom Brooks now available via SSRN. Here is its abstract:

This chapter is focused on the possible relevance of state misconduct for mitigating individual sentences.  I argued that state misconduct can justify mitigation where a sufficient connection is made between the state misconduct and the offender in one of two ways.  First, this may take the form of systematic discrimination whether or not intentional where offenders are subjected to overly harsh punishments as a result of bias against their protected characteristics, like race.  Secondly, this may take the form of deliberate bad faith that may not be systematically applied, but no less problematic.

It is argued that state misconduct matters for mitigation as a form of provocation that impacts culpability.  This might be understood differently by different penal theories, whether desert-based or consequentialist.  Either way, this view of mitigation is coherent with a variety of very different penal theories even if each might justify mitigation in different ways.

This view rests on an important assumption that it applies to states that can and do acknowledge when they, as a state, have engaged in state misconduct.  State misconduct happens and too often.  But no view of mitigation is possible where it is impossible for the state to recognise its shortcomings.  And, where it is found, the state should be compelled to ensure such misconduct is addressed so it is no longer a factor.

Prez Biden issues 11 pardons and five commutations to persons "convicted of non-violent drug offenses"

As stated in this press release from the White House, "President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. is using his authority under the Constitution to advance equal justice under law by granting clemency to 16 deserving individuals who were convicted of non-violent drug offenses." The release provide the names and various details about all the clemency recipients, though more background information is given concerning the 11 pardon recipients, and the basic sentence information is provided for the five persons who recieived prison sentence commutations. In this document, titled "Statement from President Joe Biden on Clemency Actions," comes this explanation:

America is a Nation founded on the promise of second chances. During Second Chance Month, we reaffirm our commitment to rehabilitation and reentry for people returning to their communities post incarceration.  We also recommit to building a criminal justice system that lives up to those ideals and ensures that everyone receives equal justice under law. That is why today I am announcing steps I am taking to make this promise a reality.

I am using my clemency power to pardon 11 individuals and commute the sentences of 5 individuals who were convicted of non-violent drug offenses. Many of these individuals received disproportionately longer sentences than they would have under current law, policy, and practice. The pardon recipients have demonstrated their commitment to improving their lives and positively transforming their communities. The commutation recipients have shown that they are deserving of forgiveness and the chance at building a brighter future for themselves beyond prison walls.

Like my other clemency actions, these pardons and commutations reflect my overarching commitment to addressing racial disparities and improving public safety. While today’s announcement marks important and continued progress, my Administration will continue to review clemency petitions and deliver reforms in a manner that advances equal justice, supports rehabilitation and reentry, and provides meaningful second chances.

The Department of Justice also has this list of the clemencies. It looks like most, but not quite all, of these clemency recipients were convicted and sentenced for crack offenses, with some of the pardon recipient crimes going back in the 1990s.  Most of the commutations are for folks given decades of imprisonment in the 2010s.

"Degrees of difference: Do college credentials earned behind bars improve labor market outcomes?"

The title of this post is the title of this new Criminology article authored by Abby Ballou.  Here is its abstract:

It is widely held that providing postsecondary education programs to incarcerated individuals will improve postrelease labor market outcomes. Little research evidence exists, however, to support this view.  To test the effect of postsecondary carceral education credentials on employer perceptions of hireability, the current study uses a factorial design to survey a sample of employers nationwide (N = 2,538).  Employers were presented with résumés of fictional applicants applying to a job as a customer service representative at a large call center.  The résumés randomized education credentials earned while incarcerated. 

Results indicate that employers were significantly more willing to interview applicants with postsecondary education credentials relative to applicants with only a General Educational Development (GED) diploma.  Although Black applicants who had earned a sub-baccalaureate certificate saw improvements in hireability relative to GED holders, Black applicants who had earned a bachelor's degree did not.  In contrast, White applicants benefited both from sub-baccalaureate certificates and bachelor's degrees.  Results from a mediation analysis suggest that these credentials signal important information to employers about applicant attributes and that improved perceptions of applicant ability and likelihood to reoffend drive the overall effect.  Implications for future research and policy are explored.

Puzzling through the reach and application of the Eighth Amendment inspired by SCOTUS argument in Grants Pass case

I have listened to most of yesterday's Supreme Court oral argument in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson.  I share the basic sentiments reflected in the headlines of these press accounts of the SCOTUS argument:

From the New York Times, "Supreme Court Seems Poised to Uphold Local Bans on Homeless Encampments: A majority of the justices appeared skeptical of courts wading into the thorny policy questions around when local governments can punish people for sleeping and camping outdoors."

From NPR, "Supreme Court appears to side with an Oregon city's crackdown on homelessness"

From Vox, "The Supreme Court doesn’t seem eager to get involved with homelessness policy: Grants Pass v. Johnson is probably going to end badly for homeless people, but it’s not yet clear how broad the Court’s decision will be."

The subheadline of the Vox piece captures what I have been thinking about since listening to the Grants Pass argument.  It seems likely that there are at least six votes to reverse the Ninth Circuit's ruling based on the the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eighth Amendment.  But what will be the path for doing so? 

In this post a few weeks ago, I flagged commentary expressing concern that the Supreme Court might use the Grants Pass case as an opportunity to make a new and hard originalist turn in Eighth Amendment jurisprudence.  But I did not hear much during the oral argument to suggest that many Justices were eager to take up Eighth Amendment originalism as a means to resolve the case.  There surely could be some Eighth Amendment originalism in the Court's coming opinion, but I am now puzzling through other Eighth Amendment issues Grants Pass brings up that perhaps could provide other routes for the case's disposition.   Let me explain:

1. Civil versus criminal sanctions:  Justice Thomas, in the first questions of oral argument, asked the lawyer for the City of Grants Pass, "have we ever applied the Eighth Amendment to civil penalties?"  The answer given, which I believe is correct, was " Not the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, no."  That answer was well phrased, because the Supreme Court has applied the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment to "civil" sanctions.   The courts below in this case held that the Fines Clause was implicated by the city's anti-camping ordinance AND that the ordinance was criminal becuase repeat violations could lead to jail time.   But person one technical (and unsatisfying?) way that the Supreme Court might rule for the city here would be to say that the anti-camping ordinance at issue cannot be facially unconstitutional under the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eighth Amendment when it only imposes a (modest? waivable?) fine for a first infraction.

2. Facial versus as-applied challenges:  I have never fully understood all the nuances around facial versus as-applied constitutional challenges, in part because it always seemed that Eighth Amendment claims must function as an as-applied challenge upon criminal enforcement.  Put another way, I have always assumed someone needs to first be subject to actual criminal prosecution with punishment threatened to litigate a Cruel and Unusual Punishment claim.  (A thought experiment: Could a doctor worried about new state laws criminalizing abortion bring an Eighth Amendment class-action challenge before being subject to any prosecution and even before he has performed any abortions?)  Then again, the courts below in this case held that the threat of enforcement was sufficient for standing, and arguably the categorical limits on application of the death penalty and LWOP for juveniles operate as a kind of class-wide, facial ruling about Eighth Amendment limits on statutory punishments.  Still, another technical (and unsatisfying?) way that the Supreme Court might rule for the city here would be to say that the anti-camping ordinance at issue cannot be facially challenged under the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eighth Amendment but only can be challenged in application on a case-by-case basis as it gets actually applied to different individuals.

3. Common-law defenses as constitutional defenses: The lawyer for the City of Grants Pass argued repeatedly that Oregon law recognizes a necessity defense which could be raised by homeless persons subject to the city's anti-camping ordinance.  Justice Gorsuch seemed particularly intrigued by this notion, but it is hard to sort through how this would doctrinally function as a matter of constitutional law.  Is just the availability of such a defense here, which is sure to be uncertain in application, enough to save the anti-camping ordinance from an otherwise winning Eighth Amendment claim?  Would such a ruling be tantamount to declaring that the Eighth Amendment makes a necessity defense sometimes constitutional required?  (Justice Gorush noted that it may make more sense to say a defense is required as a matter of due process, but he also recognized SCOTUS has rebuffed a due process claim regarding the insanity defense.)  Perhaps yet another technical (and unsatisfying?) way that the Supreme Court might rule for the city here would be to say that the anti-camping ordinance at issue is constitutional unless and until it is clear homeless persons are unable to advance an effective necessity defense in any criminal prosecution.   

Though some of these issues arose during oral argument, it is not clear any will be a focal point for the Court's coming disposition.  Many Justices seemed eager to make sure, in the words of Justice Kavanaugh, that "the federal courts aren't micromanaging homeless policy."  But, because the Justices are the only ones who define Eighth Amendment law, I hope they can at least avoid having this challening case create even more puzzling Cruel and Unusual Punishment jurisprudence.

US Sentencing Commission's new compassionate release data suggest (small) uptick in sentence reduction grants to close 2023

The US Sentencing Commission yesterday released this new compassionate release data report, which includes data on "the compassionate release motions filed with the courts and decided during the first quarter of fiscal year 2024."  (For the USSC, the first quarter of FY 2024 is actually the last three months of 2023.)   I noticed some interesting data points in this report comparing the sentence reduction grants and grant rates of the last three months of 2023 to prior months in 2023 and even earlier years.

Specifically, the months of October and December 2023 saw the highest grant rates for these motions (22.3% and 23% respectively) than for any month since the heart of the COVID pandemic in summer 2020.  Indeed, as Table 1 in the new USSC data shows, the only other month with a greater than 20% grant rate for these motions since August 2020 was in December 2022.  In addition, the total number of sentence reduction grants in Q1 of FY 2024 was also up as compared to recent prior quarters: there were 119 total grants in Q1 of 2024 compared to 81 in Q4 and 111 in Q3 and 114 in Q2 of FY 2023.

What explains the uptick in grants of compassionate release motions in Q1 of FY 2024?  I have two working hypotheses, one general and one 2023 specific: (1) maybe judges are slightly more likely in general to grant these sentence reductions toward the end of the year during the holiday season; and/or (2) maybe judges were influenced a bit by the new US Sentencing Commission policy statement governing compassionate release, § 1B1.13, which became formally effective on November 1, 2023.

Also, as I have noted before in this space, some other notable data points here come from the variations in grant rates from various circuits and districts.  Here is one example in this latest data: in the Second Circuit in this quarter, nine of 12 total resolved sentence reduction motions were granted; in the Third Circuitthis quarter only one of 23 motions were granted.

Critically, my eyeball assessment of these latest data (which reflect small numbers and lots of potential confounding factors) may just be an effort to encourage more systematic analysis of how federal district judges are continuing to use their sentence reduction authority.  Especially with COVID-based reasons likely no longer driving a large number of requests or grants for compassionate release, I hope we start to learn more about what facts and factors are providing most consequential in this form of federal judicial (re)sentencing decision-making.

"What Is a Prison?"

The title of this post is the title of this new book review authored by one of my Ohio State colleagues, Grace Li, now available via SSRN. Here is its abstract:

Tommie Shelby’s 2022 book The Idea of Prison Abolition sets out to compile and rearticulate the arguments for and against prison abolition -- using Angela Davis's works as the sole source texts.  In considering the arguments, he concludes that it is not necessary to abolish prisons and instead endorses reform.

In this book review, I argue that Shelby’s most helpful contribution in the book is not his analysis of whether prisons should be abolished but rather his elemental definition of incarceration.  To know what to abolish and when we have abolished it, we need to define what we mean by "prison."  I evaluate and extend his definition by culling some elements, such that the remaining elements are: "involuntary confinement," "in an enclosed space," "away from the general public;" and adding an element, "for a continuous amount of time."  I also add to these elements a list of harms that imprisonment inevitably causes.

Tennessee poised to become second state to authorize the death penalty for child rape since SCOTUS prohibition

As reported in this local piece from Tennessee, a "controversial bill that would allow the state to seek the death penalty for those convicted of rape of a child passed the House of Representatives Monday, clearing the final legislative hurdle before becoming law in Tennessee."  Here are the basics:

HB1663, by House Majority Leader William Lamberth (R-Portland), would allow for those convicted of rape or especially aggravated rape of a child in Tennessee to be sentenced to death.

The move received considerable pushback from Democrats, who argued the General Assembly was passing a blatantly unconstitutional law.  The bill was also not favored by Sen. Kerry Roberts, who said while he disagreed with the Supreme Court decisions that made and affirmed that the death penalty was considered cruel and unusual punishment, passing the law was not going to help overturn Kennedy v. Louisiana, as some of his colleagues might hope it would.

Despite attempts to amend the bill by Roberts, the Senate adopted the bill 24-5, with Sen. Todd Gardenhire (R-Chattanooga) joining Democrats opposed. The last stop for the bill in the legislative branch was the House Monday, April 22....  Ultimately, the bill passed on party lines, 77-19-1, with Clarksville Democrat Ronnie Glynn Present Not Voting.

The bill now heads to Gov. Bill Lee‘s desk for his signature. News 2 has reached out to the governor’s office for comment.

I expect that Gov Lee would be likely to sign this legislation (especially since it would seem any veto could be overridden). When this bill becomes law, Tennessee will join Florida in having a modern capital child rape statute despite the Supreme Court's ruling in Kennedy v. Louisiana, 554 U.S. 407 (2008), that the Eighth Amendment bars states from imposing the death penalty for the rape of a child.

Florida's capital child rape statute has yet to produce a death sentence that might become a new test case for the Kennedy ruling.  I predicted in this prior post that it might be many, many years before such a case gets to the Supreme Court.  More states having capital child rape laws on the books surely make a test case that much more likely.

Prior related posts:

• With new Florida law authorizing death penalty for child rape, how might SCOTUS get to reconsider Kennedy? 
• Possible Florida test case for new capital child rape statute now in the works 
• First capital child rape charge under new Florida law results in LWOP plea and sentence 

Rounding up (modest) press coverage of US Sentencing Commission's unanimous vote to limit use of acquitted conduct in guideline calculations

As reported here, last week the the US Sentencing Commission voted unanimous to promulgate a number of notable new guideline amendments, including most notably an amendment to preclude the use of acquitted conduct in guideline calculations.  (The promulgated amendments passed by the Commission are posted here).  Perhaps because acquitted conduct sentencing reform is something I consider symbolically meaningful (and overdue), I view this unanimous guideline amendment to be a pretty big deal.  But, perhaps unsurprisingly, the USSC's vote has garnered only modest press coverage to date.  Still, I figured it was worth a quick round-up:

From Bloomberg Law, "US Sentencing Commission Votes for Major Guideline Amendments"

From Law360, "Sentencing Commission Limits Acquitted Conduct Sentencing"

From Reason, "U.S. Sentencing Commission Restricts Federal Judges' Ability To Use Acquitted Conduct at Sentencing: The little-known but outrageous practice allowed judges to enhance defendants' sentences using conduct a jury acquitted them of.

From Reuters, "US panel prohibits judges from sentencing for 'acquitted conduct'"

Also, a Senator's press release:  "Durbin Applauds Sentencing Commission's Unanimous Vote To Prohibit Acquitted Conduct From Being Used In Sentencing Guidelines: The Announcement Comes After Durbin, Grassley Reintroduced Their Prohibiting Punishment Of Acquitted Conduct Act"

Sharp-eyed readers may recognize that the Reuters heading is a bit inaccurate becayse the USSC did not (and perhaps feels it cannot) entirely prohibit sentencing on the basis of acquitted conduct given applicable sentencing statutes.  Rather, the Commission voted unanimously to prohibit courts from considering acquitted conduct when calculating the applicable guidelines.  As noted in the press release from Senator Burbin's office, it may be still necessary for Congress to enact the Prohibiting Punishment Of Acquitted Conduct Act in order to completely preclude judges at sentencing from ever considering acquitted conduct.

Prior recent related post:

• US Sentencing Commission votes to promulgate guideline amendment to limit use of acquitted conduct in guideline calculations 

"Unpunishment Purposes"

The title of this post is the title of this new article now available via SSRN authored by Meredith Esser. Here is its abstract:

Sentencing scholarship often begins by exploring the traditional purposes of punishment: deterrence, retribution, incapacitation, and rehabilitation.  However, little scholarship exists addressing how these four punishment purposes apply in the post-sentencing or resentencing context.  Further, abstract theories of sentencing can often seem sterile and disconnected from the realities of how violent, disproportionate, and dehumanizing the actual experience of incarceration is for many people, and they tend to downplay the impact of incarceration on the families and communities of those who are incarcerated.  Drawing on abolitionist principles centered around harm reduction, this Article reimagines the punishment purposes in a new way, with a decarcerative valence.

This Article attempts to reconceptualize the traditional purposes of punishment in order to meet the current historical moment, and it does so through an abolitionist lens.  For example, within the past decade, a number of state and federal retroactive relief mechanisms have allowed incarcerated people to petition courts for sentence reductions based on various legal theories.  But guidance provided to courts and other decisionmakers about how to exercise their discretionary decarceration authority is lacking.  Accordingly, this Article addresses head-on the need to develop a theory of resentencing and asks whether the four purposes of punishment require revision or augmentation to account for the sentence reduction context.

Further, this Article uses the federal second look context as a means to interrogate why blind adherence to the four punishment purposes has persisted despite their clear shortcomings.  In so doing, this Article seeks to shape second look advocacy and decision-making efforts, as well as the way in which sentencing is approached in the first instance, by both shifting away from the default of incarceration as punishment for crimes and utilizing a sentencing framework that looks at societal harm more expansively.

This Article argues that, by incorporating an abolition-based theory of harm prevention or reduction into the punishment purposes, judges may have more incentive to revisit old sentencing determinations and release more people from prison.  More than that, however, incorporating such a theory into a prospective sentencing may lead judges to rethink their reflexive reliance on the punishment purposes in the first instance, resulting in less punishment altogether.

Another call for papers: Federal Sentencing Reporter issue on "Booker at 20"

In this prior post last month, I set out the full call for papers for a forthcoming issue of the Federal Sentencing Reporter in which we plans to note (and celebrate? criticize?) the federal sentencing system's 20 years of functioning under the rules created in Booker.  I previously threatened to repost this call every few weeks until the deadline thoward the end of May, and this week's interesting guideline amendment actions by the US Sentencing Commission (basics here) has me eager to do so.  For this post, I will not give all the background about Booker and be content with these shortened specifics:

Nearly 20 years have passed since Booker, and the editors of the Federal Sentencing Reporter are eager to invite judges, lawyers, other sentencing practitioners, legal academics, and sentencing researchers, to share thoughts on “Booker at 20” for publication in an early 2025 FSR issue.  FSR commentaries for this issue could tackle foundational issues (such as the Court’s ruling in Booker and follow-up cases), discrete application issues (such as why certain advisory guidelines are more likely to be followed or ignored), institutional concerns (such as how Congress and the Commission and the Justice Department have responded to Booker), or any other topic of interest or concern to modern federal sentencing policy and practice.  FSR welcomes commentaries from all perspectives, including insights from sentencing experiences (with or without guidelines) in the states and other countries.  Everyone with an informed interest in sentencing law and practice is encouraged to submit a commentary.

FSR articles are typically brief — 2000 to 5000 words, though they can run longer — with relatively light use of citations.  The pieces are designed to be read by busy stakeholders, including lawyers, judges, scholars, and legislators (as well as, of course, members and staff of the US Sentencing Commission).  Priority will be given to drafts submitted by May 28, 2024, and later submissions will be considered as space permits.  Submissions should be sent electronically to [email protected] with a clear indication of the author and the author’s professional affiliation.

"The Relative Severity of Criminal Sentences in the January 6, 2021, Capitol Breach Cases"

The title of this post is the title of this new article authored by Sam Merchant which now has an abstract available up on SSRN.  I typically will not link to an SSRN posting unless and until the full draft article is available for download.  But this article's findings seem especially timely and notable; so here is its abstract:

Many observers claim that judges are imposing disproportionately lenient sentences on January 6, 2021, “Capitol Breach” offenders.  Some have even suggested a racial or political motivation for lighter sentences.  Comparative data on these sentences and offenders, presented here for the first time, refute this narrative. Individuals convicted of felonies related to the Capitol Breach appear to actually receive longer sentences than individuals convicted of the same crimes outside of the Capitol Breach context.

But sentences in Capitol Breach cases may indeed be “lenient” for a deeper, more structural reason — the current Federal Sentencing Guidelines do not adequately account for the severity of the conduct that occurred on January 6, 2021.  There is a qualitative difference between federal offenses and the same offenses committed in the context of the “treason spectrum.”  English and American legal traditions have historically viewed treason, rebellion, and subversive activities as “the worst crimes of all” because they are crimes against all citizens and threaten the constitutional order.  Yet no sentencing enhancement addresses the increased severity of conduct involving offenses that are on the treason spectrum.

Recognizing the increased seriousness of other conduct, Congress and the Sentencing Commission have enacted an array of enhancements to punish, incapacitate, and deter offenders whose conduct involves a dangerous weapon, body armor, or even use of a fake website during an offense.  This Article proposes a new sentencing enhancement in the Federal Sentencing Guidelines that properly accounts for the relative severity of conduct involving offenses on the treason spectrum.  To reaffirm a commitment to democratic values, to deter future subversive conduct, and ensure that the legal system is equipped to respond to the severity of subversive conduct, policymakers and judges should send clear signal that subversive activities are indeed among “the worst crimes of all.”

UPDATE: It now appears that the full paper is available for download at this SSRN link.