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Federal sentencing

PDFs of Orders, Opinions and Memos

PDFs cited in the articles, listed in one place: court orders, appellate opinions, statutes, and Bureau of Prisons memos.

By Brandon Sample · Updated

The links below open PDFs that this site already cites. The list is those court orders, opinions, bills, and Bureau of Prisons memos, not a new set of cases.

Notes on bills that were still pending in 2017 and 2018, before the First Step Act became law, are on page 2 of the legislation archive.

An order in one case does not predict another case. This page is general information about federal cases.

How to use the files

Each link is the file itself. The anchor is the name of the order, opinion, bill, or memo. Open it when you want the source an article is talking about. The article pages still link the same files. This page is a second way in, from the footer, so the file is not buried several clicks down.

A court order is the judge's written decision in one case. It states what that court did in that case. It does not set the rule for every other case. Read the caption for the court and the case name before you treat the order as applying to anyone else.

An opinion is a court's explanation of a legal question. A bill or an enrolled act is the text Congress had before it, or the text that became law. A Bureau of Prisons memo is an internal instruction to staff about how the Bureau was applying a program at that time. Memos get replaced. Check the date on the memo, and check the current Bureau rule, before you rely on a 2017 or 2019 memorandum for a request you would file now.

The First Step Act files include draft bills, the enrolled act, and a few Bureau memos written while the Bureau was putting the Act into practice. The statute that was signed is Public Law 115-391. The summary of that law, section by section, is the First Step Act summary. The bill text on this page is there so you can compare what was proposed with what was enacted.

Halfway house and home confinement memos describe how the Bureau was placing people at the time of the memo. They are not a promise of a placement. The current rules for those programs are discussed on the halfway house and home confinement pages.

The PDF is the source for what that document says. Later cases, rules, or memos may have changed the law since then, so check the update note on the article that cites it. None of these documents is legal advice for a particular sentence.

The footer on every page links here. From the home page that is one click to this list and a second click to the PDF. The article that discusses a file links it too, so the file has more than one way in. The first list is court orders from cases the site discusses. The second list is opinions, bill text, and Bureau of Prisons memoranda. A date in a link is the date of that document.

Court orders

Outcomes vary. A past result does not predict or guarantee the outcome of any other case.

Opinions, statutes, and memos

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