Supreme Court Overturns Federal Sentencing Guidelines

by Democracy Now

Fri, Jan 14, 2005 8:43AM

The Supreme Court ruled that federal sentencing guidelines put in place two decades ago were unconstitutional because they violated a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to be tried by a jury. The court ruled judges cannot increase sentences beyond the maximum that the jury's findings alone would support.

The decisions -- in a pair of 5-4 rulings -- handed broader discretion to federal judges by telling them to consider the guidelines merely as a suggestion. Previously, the guidelines forced judges to boost sentences based on factors that a jury hadn't ruled on. Now judges are permitted, but not required to do so.

A few thousand defendants who have already been convicted but are appealing their sentences may have a chance to get less prison time, but for tens of thousands of federal prisoners serving time in cases that had reached final resolution, the decision will not apply retroactively.

* Barry Scheck, President of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He is a professor and director of clinical legal education at Cardozo School of Law where he co-founded the Innocence Project. He is nationally known for litigation work that has set standards for the forensic use of DNA testing.

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http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/14/1519236

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