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Criminal Sentencing in Tennessee: Purposes of the Reform Act

By Baker Associates

By way of introduction, I discuss in this entry the General Assembly?s express purposes in enacting the Criminal Sentencing Reform Act. The Reform Act is the end result of comprehensive penal and sentencing reform legislation enacted in 1989 to address inconsistencies found in the penal code. Addressing these inconsistencies, the General Assembly set standards for crime classification and sentencing methodology. Principles underlying this unifying approach were also codified (or re-codified) in TCA 40-35-102 to ensure fairness and justice in sentencing procedures. Five principles are discussed below: First, every defendant is to be punished by a sentence he or she justly deserves in relation to the seriousness of the offense. As will be seen, violent crimes like homicide and aggravated assault generally carry more severe consequences than other crimes...continue to full post

Full post as published by Tennessee Criminal Lawyer Blog on September 09, 2009 (boomark / email).