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Effective ABA Journal review of Booker at five

By Douglas A. Berman

Mark Hansen has this effective new piece, headlined "You Say You Want a Revolution: In Booker plus five, there?s been rumbling but hardly rebelling," about federal sentencing life since Booker.  Here is how it begins: Jan. 12 marked the fifth anniversary of U.S. v. Booker, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that some said would revolutionize federal sentencing. The case transformed federal sentencing guidelines from what had long been a mandatory system into an effectively advisory one. Defense lawyers cheered. District court judges viewed it as sort of an Emancipation Proclamation from the tyranny of the mandatory guidelines. Prosecutors, on the other hand, feared the decision would lead to wildly inconsistent sentences. And some lawmakers worried that it would plunge the courts into ?pre-guidelines chaos...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on February 25, 2010 (boomark / email).