Law Commons^™

Is Conviction Irrelevant?, Elizabeth T. Lear

UF Law Faculty Publications

Since 1986, the country has been witness to a revolution in federal sentencing practice: indeterminate sentencing, dominated by discretion and focused on the rehabilitative prospects of the offender, has been replaced by guidelines infused with offense-based considerations. As sweeping as the change in sentencing procedure has been, the system retains troubling aspects of the former regime. The most controversial among these is the Guidelines' reliance on unadjudicated conduct to determine proper punishment levels.

This approach is a variation on “real offense” sentencing, which severs the punishment inquiry from the offense of conviction, focusing instead on an offender's "actual" conduct. Under …

Rights Held Hostage: Race, Ideology And The Peremptory Challenge, Kenneth B. Nunn

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article addresses the Supreme Court's application of the Equal Protection Clause to the selection of juries in criminal trials. Focusing on Black-white relations, it takes the position that efforts to eliminate racial discrimination in jury selection are successful only to the extent that they also eliminate the result of the discrimination- racial subjugation of Blacks through the criminal justice process. By this measure, the Supreme Court's recent jury selection cases are an abject failure.