Articles
Articles on Federal Sentences and Appeals
Articles filed under Sentencing, newest first.
- Allocution: Your Right to Speak at a Federal Sentencing
Allocution is your chance to speak directly to the judge before the sentence is announced. Federal rules require the judge to offer it.
- The Armed Career Criminal Act and the Career Offender Guideline
The Armed Career Criminal Act turns a federal gun-possession charge into a 15-year mandatory minimum for people with three qualifying prior convictions. The career offender guideline is a separate, advisory rule.
- Character Letters for Federal Sentencing: How to Write a Letter to the Judge
A character letter tells the judge who the person being sentenced is beyond the crime. Here is who should write one, what to say, what to leave out and how it gets to the judge.
- Downward Departures and Variances in Federal Sentencing
The Guidelines Manual no longer has departures. Here is what a departure was, what replaced it, and the government-motion routes below the range that still exist.
- The Federal Sentencing Table: How to Read the Guidelines Chart
The sentencing table turns two numbers, the offense level and the criminal history category, into a guideline range in months. Here is the official table and how to read it.
- Federal Mandatory Minimum Sentences: How They Work
A mandatory minimum is the shortest prison term a federal statute allows. The judge cannot go below it except in a few narrow situations set by law.
- Offense Level in Federal Sentencing: What It Is and How It Is Determined
The offense level is one of the two numbers that set a federal guideline range. Here is how it is built, step by step, with a made-up example.
- The Presentence Report (PSR): What It Is and How to Object
The presentence report is the probation officer's report to the judge before sentencing. It scores the guidelines and tells the person's story, and it follows them into prison.
- The Federal Safety Valve: Who Qualifies and How It Works
The safety valve lets a judge sentence below a drug mandatory minimum for people who meet five requirements, and it also lowers the guideline range.
- Who Decides If You Told the Truth for the Safety Valve? The Judge
The judge does, not the government: the Fifth Circuit held that a court must decide for itself whether a defendant was truthful enough for the safety valve.
- Can Risk Scores Make Sentencing Fairer? Limits and Alternatives
Risk assessment tools are not a reliable fix for over-incarceration on their own, Jessica Eaglin argues, because they can carry the system's old biases forward.
- Are Risk Assessment Tools New? Their Long History in Sentencing
Not really: risk prediction shaped parole decisions and 1980s sentencing guidelines long before today's data-driven tools arrived.
- Risk Assessment Tools in Sentencing: Do They Help or Harm?
Risk assessment tools score how likely someone is to commit another crime, and many courts now use those scores at sentencing, which is why they are so debated.
- Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Dies at 87
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18, 2020, at age 87, after 27 years on the U.S. Supreme Court.
- JUSTFAIR: Look Up How a Federal Judge Has Sentenced People
JUSTFAIR is a public database that links about 600,000 federal sentences to the judges who imposed them.
- Which State Offices Handle White-Collar Crime?
A Bureau of Justice Statistics report shows which state attorneys general handled white-collar cases in 2014 and what sanctions they saw.
- Does Brain Scan Evidence Help or Hurt at Sentencing?
It can do both: evidence of a brain disorder may lead to less prison time, but research suggests it can also lead to more time in a hospital.
- Can a Juvenile Be Sentenced to Life Without Parole?
Only if the judge has the power to consider the person's youth: a mandatory life-without-parole sentence for a juvenile is unconstitutional.
- What Are the 5 Goals of Criminal Sentencing?
Criminal sentences serve five goals: retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, and restitution, and federal judges must weigh them in every case.
- The Property Is Gone. Can the Government Take Something Else?
Often, yes: if the property tied to the crime is gone because of what the defendant did, the government can take other property or money of equal value.