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Seventh Circuit Overturns Sentence for Lack of Explanation

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:November 19, 2011
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Federal Sentencing Public Seventh Circuit

Henry and Elizabeth Robertson were involved in a mortgage fraud scheme in the 1990′s. Many years later, they were charged with and pled guilty to wire fraud for their part in the scheme. Despite an unusual and compelling story of self-motivated rehabilitation, they were sentenced to 63 and 41 months of imprisonment, with almost no comment by the district judge in response to their arguments for lenience. Earlier this week, however, the Seventh Circuit vacated the sentences based on this lack of responsiveness. United States v. Robertson (No. 11-1651).

The decision rests on a line of Seventh Circuit cases going back to United States v. Cunningham, 429 F.3d 673 (7th Cir. 2005). These cases, which have not been followed in some other circuits, require district judges to address nonfrivolous arguments for a sentence below what is recommend by the sentencing guidelines. As I discussed in this article, I think the Cunningham rule should be adopted more widely and enforced more rigorously. For that reason, I’m glad to see the Seventh Circuit reaffirm the rule in Robertson.

Although it does not purport to break any new legal ground, the decision nonetheless has some noteworthy aspects.

Tackling the Unauthorized Practice of Law in Wisconsin Today

Post author:Peter O'Meara
Post published:November 17, 2011
Post category:Immigration Law Legal Ethics Legal Practice Pro Bono Public Wisconsin Law & Legal System

Professor Michael McChrystal once pointed out that in the State of Wisconsin, the penalty for working as a beautician without a license is not much different from the penalty for practicing law without a license.

What’s Up With SOPA?

Post author:Bruce E. Boyden
Post published:November 17, 2011
Post category:Intellectual Property Law Public

The tech blogosphere is abuzz with discussion of yesterday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, H.R. 3261. (Mainstream news sites seem not to have noticed; the New York Times website front page mentioned the impending sale of Yahoo, but not SOPA.) A good deal of that discussion refers to SOPA in apocalyptic terms: the bill would allegedly “break the Internet,” or “end the Internet as we know it,” or drive YouTube and Facebook out of business if enacted. Even non-lawyer relatives are asking me about it.

Does the bill really do all that? No. Copyright-related debates have been going on long enough, and at such a fever pitch, that such predictions are pretty much the price of admission now to rally the troops. There’s a pretty good inductive argument that predictions of the imminent death of the Internet or of the content industry are actually a reliable indicator that neither the Internet nor the content industry will die. But that doesn’t mean SOPA’s a good idea. So step one is figuring out what it does.

I’ve sat down and read the bill and there’s some aspects to it I think are misunderstood — perhaps by almost everyone. One of its provisions is much more narrowly targeted, and I think reasonable, than is generally being described. I’m going to break this discussion up into a few posts, and I’ll tackle that one first. A second provision is … deeply odd, in ways I haven’t seen mentioned, and I have serious reservations about it, but it is probably not the Vishnu-like destroyer of worlds it is being portrayed as. Finally, I’ll wrap up with some thoughts on what drives copyright rhetoric and politics generally.