Federal Criminal Law & Process – Page 20 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Sentencing Judge May Not Lengthen Prison Term in Order to Promote Rehabilitation

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:June 16, 2011
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Federal Criminal Law & Process Federal Sentencing U.S. Supreme Court

Earlier today, the United State Supreme Court ruled that federal judges may not impose or lengthen a defendant’s sentence in order to promote rehabilitation. In Tapia v. United States (No. 10-5400), the district judge apparently selected a sentence at the very top of the recommended guidelines range in order to give Tapia time to complete the Bureau of Prison’s Residential Drug Abuse Program (a/k/a the 500 Hour Drug Program). The Supreme Court rejected this reasoning as a straightforward matter of statutory interpretation: 18 U.S.C. § 3582(a) instructs sentencing judges to “recogniz[e] that imprisonment is not an appropriate means of promoting correction and rehabilitation.”

Seventh Circuit Says Begay and Chambers Must Be Applied Retroactively

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:June 11, 2011
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Federal Criminal Law & Process Federal Sentencing Seventh Circuit

Retroactivity has been in the news a lot lately, thanks to the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s ongoing consideration of whether to give already-sentenced defendants the benefit of more favorable crack guidelines. But crack defendants are not the only inmates serving extraordinarily long terms based on recently discarded aspects of federal sentencing law. Earlier this week, the Seventh Circuit approved retroactivity for another category of such inmates in Narvaez v. United States (No. 09-2919).

The Supreme Court’s recent decisions in Begay and Chambers substantially narrowed the reach of the Armed Career Criminal Act’s fifteen-year mandatory minimum. (For background, see this post. Ironically, shortly after Narvaez was decided, the Court issued its opinion in Sykes v. United States, which seemed to back away from Begay.) Five years before Begay, Luis Narvaez pled guilty to bank robbery and was sentenced as a career offender under the sentencing guidelines based on his prior convictions for “violent felonies,” including two convictions for failure to return to confinement in violation of Wis. Stat. § 946.42 (3)(a). Later, in Chambers, the Supreme Court ruled that the Illinois crime of failing to report for confinement did not count as a “violent felony.” Narvaez then filed a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 to vacate his sentence in light of Chambers. The district judge held that Chambers did not apply retroactively, but granted Narvaez a certificate of appealability.

Court Backs Away From Begay

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:June 9, 2011
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Federal Criminal Law & Process Federal Sentencing U.S. Supreme Court

Is the Begay revolution over? In its 2008 decision in Begay v. United States, the Supreme Court adopted a narrow construction of the Armed Career Criminal Act’s “residual clause,” limiting the ACCA’s reach to convictions for “purposeful, violent, and aggressive” crimes. (For background, see this post.) The following year, in Chambers v. United States, the Court again pared back the residual clause, emphasizing the need to demonstrate the objective dangerousness of an offense for it to count as a trigger for the ACCA’s fifteen-year mandatory minimum sentence.

What many observers took from Begay and Chambers is that a prior conviction does not count under the ACCA unless it satisfies both a subjective test (purposeful, violent, and aggressive) and an objective test (statistically demonstrated likelihood of injury).

But, today, in Sykes v. United States (No. 09-11311), the Court threw this understanding into doubt, suggesting a considerably more expansive interpretation of the residual clause.