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High-profile below-guideline political corruption sentence headed to Third Circuit

By Douglas A. Berman

As detailed hereand in other posts linked below, last summer brought lots of discussion and debate over the 55-month prison sentence imposed on Pennsylvania state lawmaker Vincent Fumo for his convictions on various corruption charges.  Because Fumo was convicted at trial of many charges involving lots of corruption, most commentary assailed his below-guideline sentence as too lenient.  And now, as these newspaper reports highlight, this high-profile federal sentencing debate is going to be heading to the Third Circuit: From the Legal Intelligencer here, "Federal Prosecutors Get OK to Appeal Former Senator's Fraud Sentence" From the Philadelphia Inquirer here, "Prosecutors get go-ahead to appeal Fumo sentence" Because Fumo is in his late 60s and because the Sentencing Commission has new proposed amendments that indicate that age now is a potentially relevant departure factor, this case may be extra interesting in its briefing and argument concerning reasonableness review...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on June 29, 2010 (boomark / email).