Federal Judiciary

United States v. Hamilton, et al., No. 07-2874-cr (2d Cir. April 14, 2008) (found here)

Hamilton argued that the district court abused its discretion by failing to consider Hamilton's age and his reduced likelihood of recidivism.  He argued that because his case was decided before Gall and Kimbrough the district court was not aware that it could consider an age-recidivism correlation.  And, the Second Circuit agreed, but only because of the language used by the district court at sentencing.  Specifically, the district court stated that it considered "each of the factors in the Sentencing Guidelines in the context of Mr. Hamilton's case" and sentenced Hamilton within the Guidelines.  The district court therefore -- by its own admission -- considered only "factors in the Sentencing Guidelines."  Thus, because an age-recidivism correlation is not in the Guidelines, the Second Circuit concluded that it could not "assume that the district court understood that it had the discretion to consider the policy argument disagreeing with the Guidelines' refusal to consider age and its correlation with recidivism."  The district court therefore "abused its discretion in not taking into account policy consideration with regard to age recidivism not included in the Guidelines."

Reversed and remanded for resentencing.  Me?  I think it was probably just a slip of the tongue on the part of the District Court.