Sentencing

Kansas woman pleads guilty without plea agreement to her charge. District court, in deciding what sentence to impose, states when there is no plea agreement, the sentence will be somewhere in the middle of the Guidelines range. Woman: objection! That is not a valid basis. District court: Objection overruled. Here's a sentence above the low-end of the Guidelines range based on my practice. Circuit Court: Not good.

The United States Sentencing Commission has scheduled a public hearing for Wednesday, July 19, 2023, from 9:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. (EDT). The hearing will be held at the Thurgood Marshall Federal Judiciary Building, One Columbus Circle, N.E., in the Commissioners' Conference Room of Suite 2-500 (South Lobby) (view notice).

Today, the United States Sentencing Commission published its notice of Proposed 2023-2024 priorities for the 2023-2024 Amendment cycle in the federal register, view notice.

The proposed priorities for the amendment cycle ending May 1, 2024, are as follows:

Eleven years ago this month, the Supeme Court held that mandatory life-without parole sentences for all children 17 or younger was unconstitutional. See Miller v. Albama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012). Today, the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth reports that "1,000 individuals who were sentenced to life in prison as children are now FREE!" View Full Story.

The Campaign noted some compelling facts about this group of individuals, now freed:

Washington, D.C., police officer's son after a judge vacated his death sentence and three firearms convictions (view full article).

Lighty, who was 19 at the time of the January 2002 kidnapping and killing, was one of three defendants convicted in the crime. The other two men received life sentences for their roles.

Two former governors of Alabama from opposite sides of the political aisle published an opinion piece in The Washington Post calling for the state to put an end to executing people who were sent to death row by a split jury, and for Alabama to commute the sentences of 146 death row inmates.

Last Saturday the Justice Department suspended attorney Erez Reuveni, acting deputy director of the Office of Immigration Litigation, after he admitted during a court hearing that the Trump administration mistakenly deported a Maryland man to El Salvador’s Cecot mega-prison (aka, Center for Terrorism Confinement).

A federal court in Maryland Friday ordered the Trump administration to take immediate steps to return a Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to a Salvadoran mega-prison (view previous coverage).

Ahead of his federal death penalty trial, the attorneys for Payton Gendron who killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket want to move his trial to New York City, because it would be difficult to seat a diverse and impartial jury in the upstate city (view full article).

Federal prosecutors will seek the death penalty against Luigi Mangione, the man accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a New York City hotel on Dec. 4, 2024 (view full article).