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Judges' New Leeway in Passing Sentence May Change Little
New York Times
January 18, 2005
By ADAM LIPTAK
Allowing federal judges great leeway in sentencing criminals does not have to breed chaos, say judges and sentencing specialists in states that already have such systems.
When the Supreme Court said last week that federal sentencing guidelines were merely advisory, many prosecutors and lawmakers predicted that federal judges would start issuing wildly inconsistent sentences based on little more than sentiment and whim. But the few states that already use similar systems have produced remarkable conformity.
"There is a sense out there that an advisory sentencing guideline system can't work," said Richard Kern, the director of the Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission, which oversees the system that most resembles the way federal sentences will now be handed down. "But our guidelines' compliance rate is higher than the federal system, which had a mandatory system."
In Virginia, judges follow the state's advisory guidelines 81 percent of the time, Mr. Kern said. In the District of Columbia, which converted to an advisory system for its local courts this summer, judges have been found to follow the guidelines 87 percent of the time.
"For defendants facing sentences under state advisory guideline systems," said Carmen Hernandez, a vice president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, "85 percent of the sentences imposed in those systems end up being the sentences that would have been imposed under the guidelines."...
Rest at:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/18/national/18sentencing.html>
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