Law Commons^™

Where To Go From Here? The Roberts Court At The Crossroads Of Sentencing, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

As the Supreme Court has turned federal sentencing upside down in Booker, it has left a host of open questions in the wake of that decision. The outcome of these questions is often difficult to predict, for lower courts and commentators alike, as the Court has failed to develop an overarching sentencing philosophy to replace the rehabilitation-focused one that animated sentencing for so long. If the Court were to reach consensus on that issue, it would be better able to speak coherently on unresolved sentencing matters. This introduction to an Issue of the Federal Sentencing Reporter highlights some of the …

In Booker'S Shadow: Restitution Forces A Second Debate On Honesty In Sentencing, Melanie D. Wilson

Scholarly Articles

The Supreme Court's January 2005 decision in Booker should induce Congress to enact legislation to remedy the constitutional invalidity of the MVRA and encourage the Department of Justice to revisit how restitution is charged, indicted, negotiated in plea agreements, proven at trial, and presented at sentencing hearings. The Booker decision is also a reminder to lower federal courts to adhere to the rule announced by the Supreme Court in Hughey v. United States, which limits the reach of orders of restitution. Congress, DOJ, and the federal courts should insist on candor in charging and sentencing to remedy the restitution …

The Price Of Pretrial Release: Can We Afford To Keep Our Fourth Amendment Rights?, Melanie D. Wilson

Scholarly Articles

The Fourth Amendment serves an important constitutional function. It protects the privacy of Americans from intrusions on their personal security. Few rights are held more sacred. When a person is arrested and faces the real likelihood of pretrial detention in jail, the person risks not only a reduction in his privacy rights, but also a loss of his liberty. In such circumstances, the arrested person should be able to bargain away some of his Fourth Amendment rights in exchange for the additional freedoms associated with release to home.

Undoubtedly, defendants forced to choose between incarceration and Fourth Amendment rights will …

The New Religious Prisons And Their Retributivist Commitments, Marc O. Degirolami

Scholarly Articles

This essay explores the criminological commitments of religious prisons. Though religious prisons serve rehabilitative aims, this essay emphasizes the importance of their retributive goals-what Professor R.A. Duff has termed the censure-communicating purpose of punishment and the "Three 'R's of Punishment" (repentance, reform, and reconciliation)9-in justifying the use of religious programming in prisons. The focus of this article is narrow: it offers an argument in response to skeptics who claim that religious programming serves no criminological purpose absent an unequivocal showing of rehabilitative effectiveness. It claims that even if the evidence of reduced recidivism has been inflated or manipulated, as many …