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University of Missouri School of Law

Criminal sentencing

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Freeing Morgan Freeman: Expanding Back-End Release Authority In American Prisons, Frank O. Bowman Iii Jan 2013

Freeing Morgan Freeman: Expanding Back-End Release Authority In American Prisons, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

This article, written for a symposium hosted by the Wake Forest Journal of Law & Policy on “Finality in Sentencing,” makes four arguments, three general and one specific. First, the United States incarcerates too many people for too long, and mechanisms for making prison sentences less “final” will allow the U.S. to make those sentences shorter, thus reducing the prison population surplus. Second, even if one is agnostic about the overall size of the American prison population, it is difficult to deny that least some appreciable fraction of current inmates are serving more time than can reasonably be justified on …


Nothing Is Not Enough: Fix The Absurd Post-Booker Federal Sentencing System, Frank O. Bowman Iii Jan 2012

Nothing Is Not Enough: Fix The Absurd Post-Booker Federal Sentencing System, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

This article is an elaboration of testimony I gave in February 2012 at a U.S. Sentencing Commission hearing considering whether the advisory guidelines system created by the Supreme Court’s 2005 decision in United States v. Booker should be modified or replaced. I argue that it should.


Apples And Oranges: Securities Market Losses Should Be Treated Differently For Major White-Collar Criminal Sentencing Under The Federal Guidelines, John D. Esterhay Nov 2011

Apples And Oranges: Securities Market Losses Should Be Treated Differently For Major White-Collar Criminal Sentencing Under The Federal Guidelines, John D. Esterhay

Missouri Law Review

Part II analyzes the history of market loss, a calculation of loss that arose as a damage calculation in private plaintiff civil securities fraud actions. This Part describes the evolving theory of loss causation in order to understand the foundation for market loss at criminal sentencing. This Part also explains how market loss might have been used in sentencing before the Guidelines. After the codification of the Guidelines, victim loss became the official driving factor in fraud sentencing. Thus, Part III examines the loss table and how a large loss finding leads to a long prison term recommendation. Because the …


Debacle: How The Supreme Court Has Mangled American Sentencing Law And How It Might Yet Be Mended, Frank O. Bowman Iii Jan 2010

Debacle: How The Supreme Court Has Mangled American Sentencing Law And How It Might Yet Be Mended, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

This Article argues that the line of Supreme Court Sixth Amendment jury right cases that began with McMillan v. Pennsylvania in 1986, crescendoed in Blakely v. Washington and United States v. Booker in 2004-2005, and continued in 2009 in cases such as Oregon v. Ice, has been a colossal judicial failure. First, the Court has failed to provide a logically coherent, constitutionally based answer to the fundamental question of what limits the Constitution places on the roles played by the institutional actors in the criminal justice system. It failed to recognize that defining, adjudicating and punishing crimes implicates both the …


Function Over Formalism: A Provisional Theory Of The Constitutional Law Of Crime And Punishment, Frank O. Bowman Iii Oct 2004

Function Over Formalism: A Provisional Theory Of The Constitutional Law Of Crime And Punishment, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

This Article is, in effect, the second half of the author's argument against the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Sixth Amendment in Blakely v. Washington. The first half appeared in "Train Wreck? Or Can the Federal Sentencing System Be Saved? A Plea for Rapid Reversal of Blakely v. Washington," 41 American Criminal Law Review 217 (2004), and made a pragmatic, consequentialist argument against the Blakely result. This Article takes the next step of providing an alternative constitutional model of criminal sentencing to that offered by Justice Scalia in Blakely. The model emphasizes that a good constitutional model should pay particular …


Sentencing Guidelines: Recommendations For Sentencing Reform, Barbara S. Barrett Nov 1992

Sentencing Guidelines: Recommendations For Sentencing Reform, Barbara S. Barrett

Missouri Law Review

For the last twenty years, much of the discussion about the criminal justice system has focused on criminal sentencing. Prior to 1970, the states and the federal government used indeterminate sentencing, a method whereby judges and parole boards exercised a great deal of discretion over the length of criminal sentences. This Article discusses the reasons why sentencing guidelines are the best way to achieve proportionality and uniformity in the sentencing of criminal offenders. Sentencing guidelines have been implemented in a number of states and the federal system, and, thus, the successes and failures of those reforms offer lessons for future …