December 10, 2007

Kimbrough and Gall

Two big sentencing decisions were handed down by the Supreme Court today. The dissenters in each decision were Justices Thomas and Alito.

The Supreme Court on Monday gave federal judges new authority to set sentences for crack cocaine crimes below the range of punishment set by federal guidelines - a major restoration of flexibility for trial judges in drug cases. It ruled 7-2 that the federal guidelines on sentencing for cocaine violations are advisory only, rejecting a lower court ruling that they are effectively mandatory. Judges must consider the Guideline range for a cocaine violation, the Court said, but may conclude that they are too harsh and may sentence below the range by considering the wide disparity between punishment for crack cocaine and cocaine in powder form. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the decision in Kimbrough v. U.S. (06-6330).

The ruling validates the view of the U.S. Sentencing Commission that the 100-to-1 crack v. powder cocaine disparity may exaggerate the seriousness of crack crimes. The Court decision Monday rejected the Bush Administration argument that, because Congress had written the ratio into federal law, federal judges could not depart from it. The law, the Court concluded, onoly sets maximum and minimum sentences. "The statute says nothing about appropriate sentences within these brackets, and this Court declines to read any implicit directive into the congressional silence," it declared.

Ruling in a second Guidelines case, Gall v. U.S. (06-7949), the Court - also by a 7-2 vote - cleared the way for judges to impose sentences below the specified range and still have such punishment regarded as "reasonable." The Justices, in an opinion written by Justice John Paul Stevens, told federal appeals courts to use a "deferential abuse-of-discretion standard" even when a trial sets sets a punishment below the range. Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., announced the opinion in Stevens’ absence.

Posted by armand at December 10, 2007 11:14 AM | TrackBack | Posted to Law and the Courts


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