Useful Reports, Testimony and Other Materials

SELECT USSC REPORTS

• Status of Plea Agreements Received by the U.S. Sentencing Commission Nationwide -- Fiscal Years 2010-2016
• United States Sentencing Commission's Interactive Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics and How to Use the Sentencing Commission's Interactive Sourcebook
• Supplementary Report on the Initial Sentencing Guidelines and Policy Statements (1987)
  United States Sentencing Commission
  This publication was issued by the Commission in 1987, shortly after the first edition of the guidelines was submitted to Congress. It is a primary source for "legislative history" of the guidelines. It supplements and further explains the guidelines, policy statements and commentary, and includes the results of the Commission's "past practice study" mentioned by Justice Breyer in Rita v. United States, 127 S. Ct. 2456, 2464 (2007).

  See Important Developments at the Sentencing Commission

HELPFUL SENTENCING RESOURCES

• SRC RESOURCES

  • Fact Sheet: Flawed U.S. Sentencing Commission Report Misstates Current Knowledge
    Federal Public and Community Defenders
  • The 5 Points to Know About USSC's Report Length of Incarceration and Recidivism
  • Supplement to 2018 Sourcebook Table 32
    prepared by the Sentencing Resource Counsel Project using the USSC FY 2018 Individual Datafile
    For FY 2018 the Commission stopped reporting the rate of below-guideline sentences by primary sentencing guideline. This chart supplements Table 32 of the 2018 Sourcebook and provides data on the rate of below-guideline sentences by primary guideline.
  • Fact Sheet: USSC Report on Racial Disparity is Flawed and Being Misused (Jan. 2018)
  • Social Science at Sentencing: An Annotated Bibliography
    by Denise C. Barrett, Sentencing Resource Counsel Project
    Recent research in criminology and other related social and behavioral sciences provides empirical evidence relevant to the purposes of sentencing. This document identifies resources that may be helpful in plea negotiations and sentencing advocacy.
  • Fighting Fiction with Fact to Attain Lower Sentences
    by Laura E. Mate, Denise C. Barrett, and Anne E. Blanchard, Sentencing Resource Counsel Project 
    (Listing research that practitioners can use to debunk common sentencing myths.)
  • Collateral Consequences Resource List
    by Denise Barrett and Sara Silva of the Sentencing Resource Counsel Project
    (This resource list is designed to serve as a starting point for exploring the collateral consequences of convictions and imprisonment and for educating your judge about these "invisible punishments.")
  • Federal Public Defender's Office Sentencing Resource Manual: Using Statistics and Studies to Redefine the Purposes of Sentencing
    Edited by Jennifer Coffin, Research & Writing Specialist, Federal Public Defender's Office, M.D. TN;
    Sarah Gannett, Research & Writing Specialist, Federal Public Defender's Office, D. MD; Molly Roth, Assistant Federal Public Defender, W.D. TX
    A compilation of useful resources that federal defense attorneys can consult when drafting sentencing memoranda and making oral arguments for sentences below the advisory guideline range.

    See Sentencing Resource Counsel Project Summaries of Prior Amendments to the Sentencing Guidelines here.

• LITIGATING VICTIMS RIGHTS ISSUES

  • Rights and Procedures Under the Crime Victims' Rights Act and New Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure (April 2009)
    by Amy Baron-Evans

• OTHER SENTENCING RESOURCES

  • Fact Sheet on U.S. Sentencing Commission's 2022 "Length of Incarceration and Recidivism Report" 
    Federal Public and Community Defenders (7/29/22)
    • Incarceration and Recidivism Cheat Sheet (7/29/22)
    • Printer Friendly Incarceration and Recidivism Cheat Sheet (8/1/22)

  • National Inventory of the Collateral Consequences of Conviction
    This Inventory, created by the ABA Criminal Justice Section, is the first effort to systematically collect in one place the collateral consequences of conviction that exist in the laws and regulations of every state and in the federal system.

  • NACDL Restoration of Rights Project
    This resource provides a collection of individual downloadable documents that profile the law and practice in each U.S. jurisdiction relating to relief from the collateral consequences of conviction.  The profiles include provisions on loss and restoration of civil rights and firearms privileges, legal mechanisms for overcoming or mitigating collateral consequences, and provisions addressing non-discrimination in employment and licensing.  In addition to the 54 jurisdictional profiles, there is a set of 50-state charts that make it possible to see national patterns in restoration laws and policies.

  • Collateral Consequences Resource Center
    Through its website the CCRC provides news and commentary about developments in courts and legislatures, curates practice and advocacy resources, and provides information about how to obtain relief from collateral consequences in various jurisdictions.

  • Five Things About Deterrence (July 2014)
    National Institute of Justice
    This DOJ publication confirms that longer sentences do not deter crime.

  • The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences 
    National Research Council
    This report concludes that given the minimal impact of long prison sentences on crime prevention and the negative social consequences and burdensome financial costs of U.S. incarceration rates, which have more than quadrupled in the last four decades, the nation should revise current criminal justice policies to significantly reduce imprisonment rates. 

OTHER MATERIALS

• Defender Letter to Lanny Breuer Regarding Speech at the American Lawyer/National Law Journal Summit
  By David E. Patton, Executive Director, Federal Defenders of New York, Inc.; Margy Meyers, Federal Public Defender, S.D.TX; and Henry Bemporad, Federal Public Defender, W.D. TX
  In this letter, the authors respond to a November 15, 2011 speech by Lanny Breuer, in which he stated, "In short, many prosecutors, defense lawyers, and judges agree that more and more, the length of a defendant's sentence depends primarily on the identity of the judge assigned to the case, and the district in which he or she is in." The authors demonstrate that sentencing "disparities have far more to do with the types of cases that arise in each district, and the prosecution policies that local federal prosecutors have chosen to address these cases" than the identity of the sentencing judge.
• Memo From AO Dir. Mecham re Statement of Reasons Aug. 13 2001
  This 2001 memo discusses the policy change restricting routine public disclosure of the Statement of Reasons and revised forms for judgments in a criminal case.
• Allocution Pleading and The Story Behind the Allocution Pleading (Instructions & Client Questionnaire) 
  developed by Tony Lacy, Assistant Federal Public Defender, W.D. OK
  This allocution pleading is created from a set of questions designed to elicit the client's thoughts regarding the predicament he faces, personal circumstances, the sentencing process and sentencing factors.  Counsel across the country have used it countless times since Booker, either as a stand alone pleading or as part of a combined sentencing pleading. 
• Your Client Will Not Get Mental Health Treatment in Prison: A Primer on How to Back Up That Claim
  by James Tibensky, Mitigation Specialist, Federal Defender Program of Chicago
  This article sets forth data to support an argument that a client should receive a non-prison sentence based on lack of access to mental health treatment through the Bureau of Prisons.

TESTIMONY

• Testimony from Joint Economic Committee Hearing on Negative Impacts of Mass Incarceration
  On October 4, 2007, the joint House and Senate Economic Committee held a hearing to "examine why the United States has such a disproportionate share of the world's prison population, as well as ways to address this issue that responsibly balance public safety and the high social and economic costs of imprisonment." The testimony and data from this hearing provide valuable information that may help you create or support sentencing arguments.