Federal Law & Legal System – Page 102 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Encouraging the Working Poor to Save for Retirement

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:December 28, 2010
Post category:Federal Law & Legal System Legal Scholarship Poverty & Law Tax Law

Are you saving enough for retirement? It can be a struggle even for those of us who do not live paycheck to paycheck. For the working poor, the challenge must seem truly daunting. Yet, Social Security payouts average only a little more than the poverty line, and benefits seem far more likely to decline than to increase in the future. For those on the margins of poverty, putting money aside today may be critical to avoid a financial crisis in old age.

Should government step in to promote retirement savings by the working poor? Vada Lindsey thinks so. In a new paper on SSRN, she proposes reforms to the earned income tax credit that would push recipients to put a portion of their tax refunds into retirement savings.

Vada’s proposal has many intricacies, but the core features include an automatic allocation of ten percent of EITC benefits to a retirement plan, IRA, or other investment vehicle, plus a matching contribution from the government for additional savings beyond the automatic ten percent. EITC recipients could opt out, but the default position would be in favor of savings.

SCOTUS to Decide Whether Sentencing Judge Can Base Prison Term on Time Needed for Treatment Program

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:December 13, 2010
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Federal Criminal Law & Process Federal Sentencing U.S. Supreme Court

On Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to resolve a longstanding circuit split on the question of whether a federal sentencing judge may set the length of a prison term based on what the judge believes will be necessary for a defendant to complete a prison-based treatment program. The case is Tapia v. United States (No. 10-5400).

After being convicted of alien smuggling and bail jumping, Tapia was sentenced to 51 months in prison. The judge made clear that the sentence was based, at least in part, on what the judge anticipated would be necessary for Tapia to complete a drug treatment program:

I am going to impose a 51-month sentence[:] 46 months [for smuggling] plus five months for the bail jump[.] [O]ne of the factors that affects this is the need to provide treatment. In other words, so she is in long enough to get the 500 Hour Drug Program, number one.

The dispute over the permissibility of the judge’s reasoning has its roots in the origins of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984.

Convicted of Drug Distribution, Sentenced for Homicide

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:December 9, 2010
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Federal Criminal Law & Process Federal Sentencing Seventh Circuit

Just in time for exam-writing law professors comes the Seventh Circuit’s opinion in United States v. Krieger (No. 09-1333) — a case that has just that sort of counter-intuitive, “it can’t be right” flavor that makes great testing fodder. Among other things, the case illustrates the odd place we have ended up in our jurisprudence on procedural rights at sentencing under Apprendi v. New Jersey and Harris v. United States.

Here’s what happened. Jennifer Krieger was prescribed fentanyl, a powerful opioid, to help her with severe back pain. She gave some of the drug to her friend Jennifer Curry for recreational use. Curry misused the fentanyl, as well as a variety of other substances, and died the next day. Krieger was then indicted for distributing fentanyl with death resulting. That’s when things got really weird.

It turns out that the government’s main witness, the medical examiner who concluded that Curry died of fentanyl toxicity, had some serious legal problems of his own and fled the country.