Seventh Circuit Reaffirms Conviction of Gov. Ryan

As the Casey Anthony trial/cultural moment/media feeding frenzy reached its denouement last week, two of the biggest trials of 2006 collided in the Seventh Circuit.  Five years ago, Illinois Gov. George Ryan and Enron President Jeffrey Skilling were both convicted of mail fraud.  From there, the two cases took quite different paths.  Ryan’s conviction was affirmed by the Seventh Circuit, and the Supreme Court denied certiorari, but Skilling managed to win a partial reversal in the Supreme Court a year ago, as the Court substantially narrowed the reach of the mail-fraud statute.  Ryan immediately sought another review of his conviction through a 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion, arguing that the jury in his case was improperly instructed in light of Skilling.  The district court denied relief, and the Seventh Circuit affirmed the decision last Wednesday.  Ryan v. United States (No. 10-3964).

The court did not stake out any new ground legally in Ryan, but the opinion does provide a helpful roadmap of some of the opportunities and pitfalls that face defendants who try to take advantage of a new, narrowing construction of a criminal statute after their direct appeals have been exhausted.

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R.I.P. Caylee Anthony

An Orlando jury decided on July 5 that Casey Anthony was not guilty of murdering her daughter Caylee, who was only two at the time of her death.   Hundreds of protestors gathered outside the courthouse after the verdict was announced, and local police worried if they would be able to protect the building from being torched. Few of the protestors stopped to reflect on the large role popular culture played in both their sense of outrage and in the jury’s verdict.

Most obviously, the media played up the case to the nth degree.  The media time and again broadcast winning photos of Caylee and also seemed never to tire of a home video showing her singing “You Are My Sunshine.”  Viewers of the cable news shows also saw countless screenings of Caylee’s scantily clad mother grinding in bars while her daughter was still missing.  Then, too, has anybody not heard of the “bella vita” tattoo that Casey obtained shortly after Caylee’s disappearance?  HLN host Nancy Grace was especially relentless in demanding that Casey be convicted of her crime, and for the most part the public had decided Casey was guilty.

At trial, meanwhile, it seems the much-discussed “CSI effect” played a role. 

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Sentencing Commission Makes Crack Amendment Retroactive

The U.S. Sentencing Commission announced yesterday that the most important of the recent changes to the crack sentencing guidelines will be made retroactive, assuming Congress does nothing to block retroactivity before November 1.   Filling in the details, the Commission has now posted the unofficial “reader-friendly” version of its new retroactivity amendment.  The news is very good for defendants serving long prison terms under the prior, harsher versions of the crack sentencing guidelines.  It is also important to note, however, that the Commission used this amendment as an occasion to make some subtle, but significant, changes to the retroactivity guideline that will diminish the value of retroactivity to some defendants with pending or future sentence modification requests.

Here are the highlights of the Commission’s work.

First, the big, good news for crack defendants: The Commission chose to make retroactive the changes to the drug quantity table that were promulgated in April.  The Commission also made retroactive another guidelines amendment that reduces sentences for crack defendants convicted of simple possession.  (To be technically precise, these are Parts A and C of Amendment 750.)  These were the two decisions that I (and many other witnesses) advocated most forcefully for at the June hearing on retroactivity (see my post here), and they will make a big difference for a large number of people.  According to Commission analysis, “approximately 12,000 offenders would be eligible to seek a reduced sentence and the average sentence reduction would be approximately 23 percent.”  To be sure, district judges will have discretion to turn down any sentence-modification requests they receive, but the experience with retroactivity for the 2007 crack amendment indicates that the great majority of eligible defendants will indeed be granted sentence reductions.

Second, the Commission wisely rejected the Administration’s misguided request to disqualify defendants above Criminal History III or with firearms involvement.  (See my post here.)

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