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Poetic sentencing justice thanks to Wal-Mart

By Douglas A. Berman

As first discussed here, the re-sentencing of former Wal-Mart vice chairman Tom Coughlin resulted in an interesting and important post-Gall opinion from U.S. District Judge Robert Dawson.  The full 30-page opinion (available here) merits a close read, and I wanted to highlight this lengthy poetic paragraph at the very end of the opinion:[T]he Court notes that there has been considerable debate of late concerning the sentencings of criminal defendants such as Gall and Coughlin and the role of the Guidelines in those sentencings. The goal is to reconcile a congressional desire to achieve some semblance of national uniformity in sentencing with a conflicting desire to maintain the discretion of sentencing judges, while not infringing upon the Sixth Amendment right to have jurors decide certain sentencing facts...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on February 04, 2008 (boomark / email).