US Supreme Court Orders Changes in Sentencing

By Warren Richey, Staff Writer of The CSM
Source: Christian Science Monitor

Washington -- The US Supreme Court has set the stage for a historic transformation of the criminal justice system in a ruling that requires federal judges to find a new way to mete out punishments to convicted criminals.
The nation's highest court Wednesday struck down a portion of the federal sentencing guidelines system designed to help judges hand down similar punishments for similar crimes - a system that has been in operation in federal courthouses for 17 years.

At the same time, however, a majority of justices upheld the basic structure of the guidelines system. The move may help reduce the level of confusion as federal courts attempt to apply the Supreme Court's decision to the estimated 80,000 criminal defendants sentenced each year within the federal court system.

Much of the federal sentencing system had slowed to a near halt since last June when the high court issued a ruling raising serious questions about the viability of the sentencing guidelines. Legal analysts say the decision has lived up to expectations.

"This is one of the most important decisions involving practical effects in the criminal system in United States history," says Marc Miller, a sentencing expert at Emory Law School. "It ranks up there with Miranda."

In effect, the high court issued two decisions in one, with each ruling reflecting the views of different factions of justices.

By a 5-to-4 vote, the justices said the application of the guidelines violated the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. This group of justices, led by Justice John Paul Stevens, said the guidelines impermissibly allowed judges in some instances to become a jury of one by handing down sentences that exceeded the prison term authorized by a jury's verdict at trial.

A second group of justices, led by Justice Stephen Breyer, ruled 5 to 4 that the guidelines system could be largely salvaged from the constitutional problems identified by the other justices by severing the portion of the federal sentencing statute that makes the guidelines mandatory. By striking the mandatory requirement, the guidelines would become merely advisory, thus permitting judges to tailor particular sentences in light of other legally authorized concerns.

"We do not doubt that Congress ... intended to create a form of mandatory guidelines system. But, given today's constitutional holding, that is not a choice that remains open," Justice Breyer writes.

He adds, "Ours, of course, is not the last word: The ball now lies in Congress' court. The national legislature is equipped to devise and install, long-term, the sentencing system, compatible with the Constitution, that Congress judges best for the federal system of justice."

Douglas Berman, a sentencing expert at Ohio State University, says the splintered nature of the decision may only sow more confusion. "The need to provide clarity for the lower courts took a back seat to the justices' strong beliefs about their own view of the case," Professor Berman says.

One practical effect of the ruling is that prosecutors will probably be forced to return more detailed indictments and to prove, at trial, facts they believe may be relevant at sentencing.

Sentencing guidelines were designed to limit judicial discretion while adding a degree of uniformity to punishments. To make sentences more predictable and proportionate, and to avoid unintended disparities among similarly situated defendants, the guidelines system applied an array of relevant factors to help guide judges toward a narrow sentencing range.

In addition to the core criminal charges, judges were required to consider many other factors such as criminal history, whether the defendant used a firearm, whether any victims were harmed, and whether the defendant admitted guilt and helped authorities prosecute others. Each factor was assigned a numerical value to be plugged into a chart that would reveal an appropriate sentencing range.

Where the system ran into constitutional difficulties is when a judge at a sentencing hearing accepted certain factors that increased the defendant's sentence beyond the punishment authorized by the jury's verdict.

While a jury verdict requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt, a judge has had the power under the sentencing guidelines to significantly boost sentences based on factors proved to the judge by a much lower burden of proof during a sentencing hearing conducted long after trial.

Prior to the introduction of the federal guidelines in 1987, federal judges had wide discretion to use whatever factors they felt were relevant to determine an appropriate sentence. Sometimes the wide discretion allowed impermissible biases - such as race and ethnicity - to creep into the system.

The guidelines helped make the sentencing process more transparent and made it more difficult for personal bias to play a substantial role.

But even as some supporters defended the guidelines for injecting certainty and fairness into the sentencing process, others criticized the system for tying the hands of judges in certain cases.

The decision stems from the high court's decision last June invalidating a portion of Washington State's sentencing guidelines in a case called Blakely v. Washington. In this case, the court ruled that sentencing guidelines permitting a judge to sentence an individual to a longer term than called for by the crime found by the jury violates the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial.

Although the court at the time said it was not extending its ruling to the federal guidelines, many experts said that would be the inevitable result.

And many federal judges seem to have agreed. The June decision caused a backlog in federal criminal cases, as judges awaited more specific instructions from the Supreme Court.

The court took up the issue on an emergency basis. The justices heard oral arguments on the first day of its new term on Oct. 4 in two combined cases, US v. Booker and US v. Fanfan.

Source: Christian Science Monitor (US)
Author: Warren Richey, Staff Writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Published: January 13, 2005 Edition
Copyright: 2005 The Christian Science Publishing Society
Contact: oped@csps.com
Website: http://www.csmonitor.com/

 

By Fred Barbash, Washington Post Staff Writer
Source: Washington Post

he Supreme Court today declared unconstitutional a portion of the nation's federal sentencing law and said that federal judges are no longer obligated to follow the controversial system of sentencing guidelines established by Congress in 1984.
The long-awaited decision, one of the most significant rulings in a criminal case in years, effectively converted the guidelines from mandatory status to advisory status, meaning that judges must consider them rather than necessarily follow them.

The greatest uncertainty today was the extent to which the ruling will permit appeals by individuals already sentenced under the guidelines.

The central problem with the guidelines, the court said in its 5-4 decision, is that they allow convicted criminals to have their sentences increased on the basis of facts that are unproven before a jury in court. In one of today's cases, for example, a judge increased the sentence of a Wisconsin man by 10 years for possessing more crack than the jury found he had.

In a case last year, Blakely v. Washington, the court struck down Washington state's sentencing guidelines because, like the federal guidelines, they permitted judges to boost sentences based on their own post-conviction fact-finding. The practice, the court said, violates the right to a trial by jury guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution.

Although the court said in Blakely that it did not address the federal guidelines, the similarities between Washington's system and the federal system were such that defense lawyers across the country immediately began bombarding courts with Blakely challenges to their clients' sentences. Lower courts have issued differing rulings in response, and some federal prosecutors have felt obliged to redraft indictments to make sure they conform to Blakely.

The justices were greatly divided in today's decision in United States v. Booker, over the constitutional argument as well as over the remedy.

One opinion was written by Justice John Paul Stevens and joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, David Souter, Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. All five agreed that the practice violated the Sixth Amendment.

All in the group but Ginsburg, however, said the remedy should be to let juries make the determination about enhancing a sentence.

Another group of five, led by Justice Stephen Breyer and joined by Ginsburg, among others, held that the only remedy was to invalidate part of the actual law.

"So modified," Breyer wrote, the guidelines become "effectively advisory." The holding permits a judge to "consider guidelines ranges" for sentencing but "permits the court to tailor the sentence in light of other statutory concerns as well."

Breyer, joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy, restated their view that the sentencing guideline system does not violate the constitution at all.

"The Court," Breyer wrote, "holds that the Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find sentencing facts -- facts about the way in which an offender committed the crime -- where those facts would move an offender from lower to higher Guidelines ranges. . . . I find nothing in the Sixth Amendment that forbids a sentencing judge to determine the manner or way in which the offender carried out the crime of which he was convicted."

In 1984, Congress established the United States Sentencing Commission as an independent agency within the judicial branch. The commission's first set of guidelines took effect in 1987 and survived a Supreme Court test unrelated to the Sixth Amendment in 1989. The judges and other experts who make up the seven-member panel amend the guidelines each year, after Congress has had 180 days to veto any proposed changes.

Under the guidelines, judges are given a variety of factors to consider in deciding how harshly to punish within the range of penalties established by law.

In a typical case, such as one before the court now, U.S. v. Booker, No. 04-104, an accused drug trafficker either pleads guilty or is convicted by a jury of selling cocaine, and then a government probation officer presents the judge with findings as to the exact amount of drugs involved.

A jury found that Freddie Booker had trafficked more than 50 grams of cocaine. The judge found that the actual amount was 658.5 grams, that Booker had perjured himself at trial and that he had 23 prior convictions. The result under the guidelines: a sentence of 30 years, far longer than Booker would have gotten for trafficking 50 grams.

In its brief defending the guidelines, the Bush administration argued that Blakely should not apply to the federal guidelines because, unlike the Washington state guidelines, they were created not directly by statute but by a commission within the judicial branch.

Stevens and a majority dismissed that contention as "constitutionally irrelevant." The Sixth Amendment applies to guidelines as well as to statute, he wrote.

"This is a major victory for those federal judges who have long complained" about the restrictive aspects of the guidelines, said Thomas C. Goldstein, who represented the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in the case. "Where federal judges previously were required to follow this rigorous sentencing guideline system, now those guidelines are advisory."

It is, he said, "the most significant criminal law ruling in a decade" though "its net effect in individual cases is yet to be seen."

Dean Strang, co-counsel for defendant Freddie J. Booker, said the "net effect is 'guidelines lite.' . . . The guidelines will no longer be binding." Judges will "now treat the federal guidelines in their entirety as advisory," to be consulted for determining a sentence's reasonableness.

"Up until today, absent extraordinary circumstances, federal judges were to impose a sentence within a binding guideline range."

Source: Washington Post (DC)
Author: Fred Barbash, Washington Post Staff Writer
Published: Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Copyright: 2005 Washington Post
Contact: letterstoed@washpost.com
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com