A leading text in criminal law, co-authored by leading scholars in the field, Sentencing Law and Policy draws from extensive sources to present a comprehensive overview of all aspects of criminal sentencing. Online integration with sentencing commissions, thorough treatment of current case law, and provocative notes and questions, stimulate students to consider connections between disparate institutions and examine the purposes and politics of the criminal justice system. The Third Edition has been updated to include recent developments in sentencing case law and provocative discussions of policy debates across a wide range of topics, including discretion in sentencing, race, death penalty abolition, state sentencing guidelines, second-look policies, the impact of new technologies, drug courts and much more. Features: Authors are among the leading sentencing scholars in the United States. Demleitner and Berman are editors of the leading sentencing journal, Federal Sentencing Reporter. Berman is the blog master of the leading sentencing blog, with huge readership. Intuitive organization tracks the process that occurs in every criminal sentencing. Each chapter draws on the most relevant examples from three distinct sentencing worlds: guideline-determinate, indeterminate, and capital. Wide-ranging source materials, including: U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Cases from state high courts, federal appellate courts, and foreign jurisdictions. Statutes and guidelines provisions. Reports and data from sentencing commissions and other agencies. Problems and questions in text are integrated with websites of sentencing commissions, such as the site for the U.S. Sentencing Commissions (www.ussc.gov). Challenging questions ask students to compare institutions and consider the connections between specific sentencing rules and the purposes and politics of criminal justice, emphasizing the effects of sentencing. Notes tell students directly what are the most common practices in U.S. jurisdictions. Instructorsand’ website (www.sentencingbook.net) provides the Teacherand’s Manualand—available only electronically on the siteand— with additional teaching materials to be posted as needed. Studentsand’ website (www.sentencingbook.com) features longer collections of rules and guidelines, statutes, case studies, recent articles, practice problems, sample exams, and a virtual library. Thoroughly updated, the revised Third Edition includes: New Supreme Court cases, including Gall, Kimbrough, Padilla (6th Amendment), and Kennedy (child rape sentencing limits). Policy debates over mass incarceration, the relevance of the budget crisis, and the state-level variation in deincarceration. Shifting authority among key actors in the crack penalty/crack reform debate, including the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA). Expanded core study of discretion in sentencing and attention to race in sentencing, with a close study of the North Carolina Racial Justice Act and the emergence of and“racial impact statementsand” about existing systems and proposed legislation ina number of states. Death penalty abolition. Developments in state sentencing guidelines, noting stand-still in new states, and the relevance of the ALI MPC project. Emergence of and“second lookand” policy discussions, the troubled debate over the theory, operation and impact of parole systems, and the and“supervised releaseand” that has come to replace traditional parole. Discussion of new technologies, developm

Federal judges have struggled mightily to comprehend the meaning and impact of the Supreme Court's landmark sentencing decision in United States v. Booker. In Rita v. United States, the Justices provided only limited additional Booker guidance having issued four opinions that raise more questions than they answered. The opinions in Rita revealed not only that the Court is still struggling with its Sixth Amendment jurisprudence, but also that the Justices have divergent views on the many other dynamic issues raised by the Booker remedy of an advisory guideline system.As detailed in this article, the Booker remedy transformed a constitutional debate into a multi-dimensional cacophony of sentencing issues that Rita could only begin to address. Moreover, though Rita does answer a few key post-Booker questions, the opinions in Rita have passages that present new puzzles for anyone trying to sort through the post-Booker world of federal sentencing. Further, Rita and lower courts' early reactions to the decision ultimately reveal, yet again, that dramatic legal changes face resistance from sentencing actors who become acclimated to the status quo. Indeed, the history of modern federal sentencing reforms demonstrates that changes in legal doctrines become revolutionary only when they ultimately transform the legal cultures in which these doctrines operate. This lesson should be heeded not only by the Supreme Court as it considers another set of sentencing cases, but also by all would-be legal reformers in the field of sentencing and beyond.

Contains a report by Gants, an attorney with the firm of Palmer and Dodge, who was asked by the trustees of the Harvard Law Review to serve as investigator into accusations of race and gender discrimination made by members of the Review editorial staff against its editor-in-chief Emily Schulman.

States reforming marijuana laws should be particularly concerned with remedying the past inequities and burdens of mass criminalization. State marijuana reforms should not only offer robust retroactive ameliorative relief opportunities for prior marijuana offenses, but also dedicate resources generated by marijuana reform to create and fund new institutions to assess and serve the needs of a broad array of offenders looking to remedy the collateral consequences of prior involvement in the criminal justice system. So far, California stands out among reform states for coupling repeal of marijuana prohibition with robust efforts to enable and ensure the erasure of past marijuana convictions. In addition to encouraging marijuana reform states to follow California's lead in enacting broad ameliorative legislation, this essay urges policy makers and reform advocates to see the value of linking and leveraging the commitments and spirit of modern marijuana reform and expungement movements. Part II begins with a brief review of the history of marijuana prohibition giving particular attention to social and racial dynamics integral to prohibition, its enforcement and now its reform. Part III turns to recent reform activities focused on mitigating the punitive collateral consequences of a criminal conviction with a focus on the (mostly limited) efforts of marijuana reform states to foster the erasure of marijuana convictions. Part IV sketches a novel proposal for connecting modern marijuana reform and expungement movements. This part suggest a new criminal justice institution, a Commission on Justice Restoration, to be funded by the taxes, fees and other revenues generated by marijuana reforms and to be tasked with proactively working on policies and practices designed to minimize and ameliorate undue collateral consequences for people with criminal convictions.

This Essay examines the issue of “sentence finality” in the hope of encouraging more thorough and reflective consideration of the values and interests served -- and not served -- by doctrines, policies, and practices that may allow or preclude the review of sentences after they have been deemed final. Drawing on American legal history and modern penal realities, this Essay highlights reasons why sentence finality has only quite recently become an issue of considerable importance. This Essay also suggests that this history combines with modern mass incarceration in the United States to call for policy-makers, executive officials, and judges now to be less concerned about sentence finality, and to be more concerned about punishment fitness and fairness, when new legal developments raise doubts or concerns about lengthy prison sentences.

The Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Booker appears to be a two-headed monster and a conceptual monstrosity. In Booker, dual 5-4 majorities issued dueling opinions in which the Supreme Court first held that the operation of the federal guidelines as mandatory sentencing rules violated the Sixth Amendment jury trial right, but then crafted a remedy that rendered the guidelines advisory and thus greatly enhanced the sentencing power of judges. Read independently, each majority opinion in Booker seems conceptually muddled; read together, the two Booker rulings seem almost conceptually nonsensical. Yet, viewed from a functional perspective, the Booker decision makes more conceptual sense than it may at first appear. Though a deeply fractured Supreme Court has not been able to work together to forge a clear sentencing jurisprudence, some sound sentencing concepts can be identified within both majority opinions in Booker. Booker comes into sharper conceptual focus when located within broader stories about sentencing reform and constitutional jurisprudence. Reflecting on sentencing history and recent reforms, this article suggests a simple idea that helps unlock the conceptual mystery presented by Booker: sentencing is a distinct enterprise in the criminal justice system - and thus should permit a distinct constitutional structure - if and only when sentencing decision-makers are exercising reasoned judgment. Building on this concept, this Article explains how the two parts of the Booker opinion can be conceptually harmonized around the idea that broad judicial power at sentencing can be justified if and only when judges are exercising reasoned judgment. In other words, Booker's conceptual core - what we might call the Tao of Booker - is best understood not in terms of vindicating the role of juries and the meaning of the Sixth Amendment's jury trial right, but rather in terms of vindicating the role of judges and the meaning of sentencing as a distinct criminal justice enterprise defined and defensible in terms of the exercise of reasoned judgment. Conceptualizing Booker as a decision vindicating the role of judges exercising reasoned judgment at sentencing has important implications for the Supreme Court's still developing Sixth Amendment jurisprudence and for how lower courts should approach federal guideline sentencing after Booker.

In March 2020, in response to the COVID-19 national emergency, states across the United States began issuing shelter-in-place orders curtailing operations of individual businesses based on “essential” and “non-essential” classification. Virtually all states with legalized medical cannabis, and the majority of adult-use states, allowed cannabis establishments to remain open albeit often with significant restrictions on their operations. Yet, the cannabis industry, and small, minority-owned or social equity designated businesses in particular, are not insulated from the broader economic shockwaves spreading through the country. In April 2020, the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center conducted a survey asking patients/consumers and cannabis industry professionals about the challenges they were experiencing and government responses. Hoping to fill a gap in early discussions of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, we were especially interested in the impact on cannabis industry participants designated as social equity businesses. The results indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic has both introduced tremendous new challenges for the cannabis industry and exacerbated long-standing difficulties for businesses in this arena. If small, minority-owned and social equity businesses are to survive, they need to be treated by the system like any other regular small business venture. While regulations and safeguards are necessary, these businesses need to be able to operate as a true business, rather than a semi-legal venture with no access to loans, banking, insurance, tax relief, and flexible deliverable modes.