Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | T | Trial

Resurrecting the sentencing guidelines.

Article Excerpt
In Rita v. United States, the Supreme Court issued a moderate decision on the federal sentencing guidelines and the extent to which they should influence the sentencing decisions of district judges. (1) While still allowing the guide lines to exert considerable force, the ruling encourages judges to exercise reasoned discretion in cases where they choose to diverge from them.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The majority opinion by Justice Stephen Breyer is straight-forward: Appellate courts may presume that any sentence that falls within the guidelines is reasonable. Of course, as anyone who has walked the edges of the sentencing swamp knows, nothing is really that clear and simple. But Rita is another step out of the bog created by United States v. Booker, (2) where the Court, following the mandate of Blakely v. Washington, (3) struck down the mandatory federal sentencing guidelines as violative of the Sixth Amendment fight to jury trial.

The defendant in the case, Victor Rim, lied to a grand jury about buying a kit to make a machine gun, and he was convicted of perjury and four other counts involving false statements. Under the sentencing guidelines, he should have been sentenced for the most serious of these counts, which is perjury.

In the guidelines' sentencing scheme, perjury has a Base Offense Level of 20, which is six levels lower than the underlying crime that Rita lied about. (4) Because Rita's only criminal conviction happened more than 10 years earlier, it did not count, placing him in Criminal History Category I--the lowest possible category. (5)

The presentence report described other "offender characteristics," including Rita's physical and emotional health, lack of any history...