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District court opinion takes apart career offender guideline

By Douglas A. Berman

Providing a fitting complement to Judge Nancy Gertner's recent work on what "similarly situated" means under the guidelines (discussed here), Judge Lynn Adelman has a new opinion deconstructing the career offender rules in US v. Seib, No. 07-CR-215 (E.D. Wisc. May 16, 2008) (available for download below).  In addition to covering lots of important post-Booker ground, Judge Adelman drops this telling footnote in Seib which speaks volumes about modern federal sentencing realities:This case demonstrated how the complexity of the career offender guideline can flummox even the shrewdest lawyers and probation officers, with potentially dramatic consequences.  Defendant faced a guideline sentence more than three times longer under the career offender provision...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on May 21, 2008 (boomark / email).