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Continued Vitality Of Structured Sentencing Following Blakely: The Effectiveness Of Voluntary Guidelines, The , John F. Pfaff
Continued Vitality Of Structured Sentencing Following Blakely: The Effectiveness Of Voluntary Guidelines, The , John F. Pfaff
Faculty Scholarship
In two recent opinions, Blakely v. Washington and United States v. Booker, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively invalidated the binding nature of sentencing guidelines used by many states and the federal government over the past thirty years. Not surprisingly, numerous commentators have asserted that Blakely and Booker profoundly altered the nature of sentencing in the United States. But these claims have been made without any meaningful empirical consideration of whether viable alternatives exist. This Article fills that gap. It explores the extent to which voluntary, nonbinding criminal sentencing guidelines influence the sentencing behavior of state trial judges. In particular, it …
Vitality Of Voluntary Guidelines In The Wake Of Blakely V. Washington: An Empirical Assessment, The Articles On Guideline Operation Issues, John F. Pfaff
Faculty Scholarship
This Article explores the extent to which voluntary, non-binding criminal sentencing guidelines influence the sentencing behavior of state trial judges. In particular, it focuses on the ability of such guidelines to encourage judges to sentence consistently and to avoid improperly taking into account a defendant's race or sex. It also compares such guidelines to more-binding presumptive guidelines, which were recently found constitutionally impermissible in Blakely v. Washington. In general, the results indicate that voluntary guidelines are able to accomplish much, though not all, that presumptive guidelines were able to, especially with respect to sentence variation. For example, voluntary guidelines appear …