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Sentencing Law and Policy 
News, issues, commentary and provides resources related to sentencing law and policy.
Post Frequency: 77.7/day Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 10:54:24 Recent Entries: 4815
By Douglas A. Berman
Go to Sentencing Law and Policy, find other Criminal Law blogs, or browse all law blogs.
"Fake lawyer Kieffer sentenced to 51 months"
Posted on August 15, 2009The title of this post is the headline of this Denver Post article providing the sentencing news in a fraud case involving a defendant well known to lots of folks in the federal sentencing community. Here are the details: Howard...
New York Times op-ed urging "Getting Smart on Crime"
Posted on August 15, 2009Today's New York Times included this op-ed by Charles Blow titled "Getting Smart on Crime." Though the piece cover a lot of ground that should be familiar to regular readers of this blog, these excerpts (and the chart reprinted here)...
NPR coverage of medical marijuana in California
Posted on August 14, 2009Yesterday, NPR ran these two interesting segments discussing medical marijuana in California: Pot-Friendly California: Amsterdam In America? Pot Collective Sprouts In Retirement Community Here is how the first piece gets started: More than a dozen years ago, California became the...
Split Tenth Circuit panel overturns Second Amendment ruling for misdemeanant via mandamus
Posted on August 14, 2009Back in June, a federal district judge issued this brief opinion in US v. Engstrum, No. 2:08-CR-430 (D. Utah June 15, 2009), that ruled that the Second Amendment should allow someone being prosecuted for possessing a gun after having been...
Ohio governor rejects parole board recommendation of capital clemency
Posted on August 14, 2009As detailed in this new AP report, "Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland has denied clemency for the triggerman in a 1995 murder-for-hire scheme, overriding the state parole board's recommendation for mercy." As regular readers may recall from posts here and here,...
"Judges' Dissents for Death Row Inmates Are Rising"
Posted on August 14, 2009The title of this post is the headline of this front-page article in today's New York Times. Here is a snippet: In dozens of capital cases in recent years, appeals court judges, some of whom have ruled in favor of...
Eleventh Circuit to review en banc below-guideline sentence in "utterly gruesome" sex offense case
Posted on August 13, 2009As detailed in this post, in late March an Eleventh Circuit panel handed down a notable opinion in US v. Irey, No. 08-10997 (11th Cir. Mar 30, 2009) (available here), which affirmed a below-guideline sentence of 210 months for a...
NFL Commissioner "sentences" Donte Stallworth to a year without pay
Posted on August 13, 2009As detailed in this New York Times article, Donte Stallworth has now been "sentenced" again for killing a pedestrian while driving drunk. Here are the basics: The National Football League?s summer of malefactors took another turn Thursday, when Commissioner Roger...
Ninth Circuit rejects broad computer restriction in child porn sentence
Posted on August 13, 2009Providing a fitting and timely follow-up to this morning's WSJ article on these topics (discussed here), today the Ninth Circuit in US v. Riley, No. 08-50009 (9th Cir. Aug. 13, 2009) (available here), vacates a condition of supervised release that...
"Gulags in the sun"
Posted on August 13, 2009The title of this post is the headline given to this notable piece in The Economist discussing California's prison problems. Here are snippets: The overcrowding in California?s prisons, by far the worst in the country with only Georgia and Alabama...
"Courts Face Growing Battle Over Limits on Ex-Convicts"
Posted on August 13, 2009The title of this post is the headline of this effective article in today's Wall Street Journal. Here are some highlights: When felons are released from prison, what is the best way to give them back their freedom but make...
Virginia governor's race raising crime and punishment debates
Posted on August 13, 2009This new Washington Post article about the Virginia governor's race, which is headlined "McDonnell Proposes Drug Courts, Lifetime Sex Offender Tracking," suggests that the future is now for serious political discussion of certain alternatives to prison for dealing with crime...
Sixth Circuit splitting over challenges to Ohio's execution protocol
Posted on August 13, 2009Yesterday the Sixth Circuit issued this opinion in Getsy v. Strickland that affirms the dismissal of a death row inmate's challenge to Ohio's lethal injection protocol as time-barred. Here is part of the discussion from the opinion for the court,...
Notable new paper with interesting post-Booker data analysis
Posted on August 12, 2009This new paper on SSRN by Ryan Scott, which is titled "In Search of the Booker Revolution," presents new data and analysis on how one district is sentencing after Booker. Here is the abstract: In 2005, the Supreme Court in...
Timely reflections on sentencing retroactivity
Posted on August 11, 2009As Congress considers reducing crack sentences and state work on reducing their prison population, the retroactive application of new sentencing rules that reduce sentences is an especially important issue these days. Consequently, I was pleased to see this timely new...
The Economist assails US sex offender laws
Posted on August 11, 2009The August 6th issue of The Economist includes these two pieces concerning US sex offender laws and policies: Unjust and ineffective America's unjust sex laws As these headlines suggest, these articles are mostly critical and their main focus is sex....
Where the jobs (and future sentencing issues) can be found
Posted on August 11, 2009This new piece in The National Law Journal, which is headlined "DOJ Looks for 'Rock Star' to Run Top-Priority Fraud Cases," is a fascinating read for anyone interesting the future of the federal criminal justice system. Here are excerpts from...
NC Gov official signs new racial justice act concerning capital prosecutions
Posted on August 11, 2009The first sentence of this local article provides the big capital punishment news from North Carolina today: "North Carolina now allows challenges to the death penalty based on race." Here's more from the start of the new report: Gov. Bev...
"At least 23 states spend less on prisons"
Posted on August 11, 2009The title of this post is the headline of this effective new piece at Stateline.org. Here are a few excerpts that spotlight the continued impact of both lean budgets and political dynamics on the operation of modern criminal justice systems:...
DOJ not to appeal Tenth Circuit sentencing ruling in Nacchio case
Posted on August 11, 2009In posts here and here discussing the Tenth Circuit panel's important ruling that reversed the sentence imposed on former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio following his conviction for insider trading, I suggested that the Justice Department might not even bother to...
Is SCOTUS partially to blame for rioting in a California prison?
Posted on August 10, 2009Just when it might seem things could not get any worse for California's over-crowded and politically dysfunction prison system, a massive riot breaks out. And, as this New York Times coverage of the riot reveals, it might be appropriate to...
"Judge sentences man to 6 months in jail for yawning"
Posted on August 10, 2009The title of this post is te headline of this article from the Chicago Tribune. Here are the basic details from the start of the artice: Clifton Williams arrived at the Will County Courthouse in Joliet and sat in the...
Public defender complaining about increased pace of Ohio executions
Posted on August 10, 2009This new item from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which is titled "Executions are coming too fast, Ohio Public Defender Tim Young says," spotlights some of the complains and concerns emerging as Ohio becomes the north's Texas: The state of Ohio...
"Mentally Ill Offenders Strain Juvenile System"
Posted on August 10, 2009The title of this post is the headline of this article in this morning's New York Times, which provides still more evidence that crime and criminal offenders often are a reflection of public health problems. Here is a snippet: As...
Kentucky looking to reduce prison costs to avoid educational cuts
Posted on August 10, 2009Telling a story that I suspect is familiar in the majority of states, this local article from Kentucky, headlined "State looks at prison spending," highlights that state leaders are coming to see that surging prison costs risk drawing funds away...
Governor Kaine grants conditional pardon to three of the "Norfolk Four"
Posted on August 09, 2009This Washington Post article, headlined "3 of 'Norfolk 4' Conditionally Pardoned in Rape, Killing," provides the details on a notable state pardon grant issued in a high-profile case out of Virginia. Here is how the article starts: Three members of...
A crack-transition question from a public defender
Posted on August 09, 2009I received via e-mail this inquiry from a public defender, which I was authorized to put up on the blog: Given that H.R. 3245 is pending in the House and given that ? according to F.A.M.M. ? it will eliminate...
Detailing the extreme toughness of juvenile justice in Florida
Posted on August 09, 2009The constitutionality of the extreme toughness of juvenile justice in two paricular Florida cases will be before the Supreme Court in the Graham and Sullivan cases to be argued in the fall. In the meantime, this front-page article from the...
Reviewing the modern persistence of persistence of sentencing guidelines
Posted on August 09, 2009This new piece appearing on SSRN, which is titled "Guidelines as Guidelines: Lessons from the History of Sentencing Reform," ensured itself a mention on this blog by mentioning this blog in its abstract. But, as the abstract for this piece...
"Myths About High Times in America"
Posted on August 09, 2009The title of this post is the headline of this interesting piece in the Washington Post by Ryan Grim, who is also the author of "This Is Your Country On Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America." Here...
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you should be getting a mileage comp. I own my own company and I pay my employee...
Can i sue my employer for breach of Contract?
i would suggest you get professional advice
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I have worked for this employer for only three weeks. The employer makes up his own rules as to what he chooses to report for the purpose of property taxes. He tells me to "let them come after us". He defines Entertain
He arrogantly insists, "let them come after us." Well, if you are invo...
I was fired on June 3, 2002 in Massachusetts because I reported discriminatory behavior by the employer towards a particular nationality. In July I filed a discrimination/retaliation complaint against the employer with t
It seem sin your case that the fact you filed the complaint prior to being dissa...
Does failure to provide health insurance benefits at the time promised constitute harm to the employee?
Yes. Failure to provide health insurance benefits is a violation of Labor Law ob...
My job requires me to drive bank deposits up to two times a day using my own vehicle and gas. Although not too far, can should I be receiving compensation? One deposit run is required daily by company policy, but the man
you should be getting a mileage comp. I own my own company and I pay my employee...
Can i sue my employer for breach of Contract?
i would suggest you get professional advice
from what you have put here yo...
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