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Two opinions and two wins for criminal defendants from the Supreme Court

By Douglas A. Berman

Continuing its trend of being the most pro-defendant appellate court in the nation on sentencing issues, the Supreme Court issued two opinions this morning and both involve wins for defendants.  Here are the basic details from Lyle Denniston in this helpful SCOTUSblog post: The Court has released the opinion in Chambers v. United States (06-11206), on whether a failure to report to prison is the equivalent of escape for purposes of enhanced sentencing under the Armed Career Criminal Act.  The ruling below, which found for the government, is reversed and remanded.  Justice Breyer wrote the majority opinion.  Justice Alito filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which Justice Thomas joined. The opinion is available here. The Court has released the opinion in Jimenez v...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on January 13, 2009 (boomark / email).