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Guideline Goodness II: Inside the Gift Horse's Mouth

By Melody Evans and Kirk Redmond

The now-effective changes in the crack guidelines are the Sentencing Commission?s attempt to make the best of a bad situation. Because the Commission believes it must peg crack sentences to the mandatory minimums in 18 U.S.C. § 841, it has still tied the guidelines (albeit in a more lenient fashion) to the five and ten year statutory minimums. For example, under the 2006 guideline, between five and twenty grams of crack was sentenced at BOL 26 for a range of 63-78 months, because the statutory minimum for five grams was 60 months. The new guideline simply recalibrates the range two levels downward, which still takes into account the mandatory minimum. Under the new guideline, five to twenty grams of crack is sentenced at BOL 24, for a range of 51-63 months...continue to full post

Full post as published by Kansas Federal Defender on November 02, 2007 (boomark / email).