Burglary, Violence, and the Armed Career Criminal Act

The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics has issued a new report on victimization during household burglary, which might have important implications for the application of the Armed Career Criminal Act.  First, here are the report’s highlights on the burglary-violence connection:

  • A household member is present in about one-quarter of residential burlgaries.
  • A household member is violently vicitmized in about seven percent of residential burglaries (or about one-quarter of the burglaries in which a household member is present).
  • In residential burglaries, simple asault is the most common violent crime (3.7 percent of all burlgaries), while more serious violent crimes like rape (0.6 percent) and aggravated assault (1.3 percent) are far less frequent.
  • In a majority of even the “violent” burglaries, the victim indicates there is no injury; a “serious injury” is sustained in only 8.5 percent of the violent burglaries.
  • In the violent burglaries, fewer than forty percent of the offenders are armed.

Now, for the ACCA link. 

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New Comments Address Fraud Sentencing and Deferred Prosecution Agreements

The latest issue of the Marquette Law Review features a student comment by Ryan Parsons on the treatment of “temporary victims” under the federal sentencing guidelines.  In crimes such as bank fraud, individual accountholders that have been defrauded are often reimbursed by the bank and, therefore, made economically whole.  Such reimbursed accountholders are often ignored for purposes of sentencing enhancement, even though reimbursement may not occur without time and effort expended by these temporary victims.  Parsons describes how various courts have dealt with this phenomenon, as well as the Federal Sentencing Commission’s recent decision to include all such temporary victims in the enhancement calculation regardless of whether the defrauded accountholders even knew about the fraud.  Parsons argues that in order for a sentence to accurately reflect the severity of the crime, temporary victims should be taken into account to the extent that they suffered actual, monetizable losses (e.g., time spent pursuing mitigation).

This issue also includes Rachel Delaney’s comment analyzing the use of deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) in the corporate crime context, ultimately calling for congressional regulation of prosecutorial discretion.  

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Filip Expresses Concern About the Return of Sentencing Disparities

jailed womanFormer U.S. Deputy Attorney General Mark R. Filip warned at Tuesday’s Hallows Lecture that disparities in sentencing by federal judges are returning since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled five years ago that sentencing guidelines are only advisory.

Filip, who also is a former federal judge and now practices with a Chicago law firm, said that United States v. Booker in 2005 reduced the import of sentencing guidelines that dated to the late 1980s, “returning us to an era of indeterminate sentencing.” While he said that commentary on Booker from both judges and defense lawyers has been generally favorable, data on sentencing patterns since the decision show that in different parts of the country, significantly different sentences are being given for comparable convictions. 

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