18 U. S. C. §924(c)(1)(A) makes it a federal crime to have a gun on you while committing certain violent or drug-related crimes. There’s a mandatory 5-year minimum sentence just for carrying the gun. If you brandish the gun, it goes up to 7 years. If the gun goes...
A panel of three federal judges yesterday essentially ordered the State of California to reduce its prison population by as much as 57,000 people, because crowding is causing violations of prisoner rights. This doesn’t mean that wardens will be releasing thousands of hardened criminals back onto the streets, but it...
District Court Judge Percy Anderson sentenced Jeanetta Standefor to more than 12 years in prison on Tuesday, for running an $18 million Ponzi scheme that preyed on middle-class black investors. Standefor, who is also black, solicited investments from 650 people around Pasadena who thought the money would go to...
This morning, the Supreme Court returned from its long break to issue a unanimous ruling in Chambers v. United States (No. 06-1120, Jan. 13, 2009). At issue was the crime of failure to report to jail, and whether that crime is a “violent felony” for the purposes of the Armed...
On Tuesday, the Fifth Circuit ruled on Jeff Skilling’s appeal from his conviction in the Enron case, upholding the conviction, but sending the case back for re-sentencing. Skilling may be able to raise a Brady issue on remand, as well, so the case doesn’t seem to be over. The opinion...
OJ Simpson was sentenced today in Clark County District Court, after previously being found guilty of multiple crimes arising out of an armed break-in and theft at a Las Vegas hotel. The details can be found in any news outlet you fancy. But what sentence did he get? The headlines...
The respected journal Science will publish tomorrow a research study that suggests that the threat of punishment can keep people from getting in trouble. Stop the presses! You’d think that this might have been studied before. But previous studies (focusing on freeloading vs. pro-social behavior) only focused on short-term outcomes....
The Wall Street Journal today reports on a developing issue in sentencing law: are child porn consumers being sentenced disproportionately high? Justice Department data, referred to somewhat inaptly by the Journal, lumps viewers of child porn with those who distribute it. In the group of those convicted of possessing,...
Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, has suggested to the Washington Post that the Supreme Court may be getting ready to review “whether the death penalty is applied in a discriminatory discriminatory way, an issue the Court has not taken up for two decades.” Dieter drew...
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