Digital Commons Network^™

Ex-Post-Booker: Retroactive Application Of Federal Sentencing Guidelines, Christine M. Zievel

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In United States v. Booker, a dramatic decision handed down in early 2005, the Supreme Court attempted to cure Sixth Amendment issues by excising the mandatory provisions of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and changing the binding role of the Guidelines to advisory. For close to twenty years, federal circuit courts had used the Ex Post Facto Clause to prohibit sentencing judges from retroactively applying revisions of the federal Guidelines. However, after Booker's advisory mandate and the Guidelines' supposed loss of force in sentencing decisions, some circuits have now found that the same retroactive application no longer violates the …