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Criminal Procedure

Federal Sentencing Guidelines

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Editor's Observations: It's Alive! The Federal Booker-Fix Debate Sirs, Frank O. Bowman Iii Jun 2012

Editor's Observations: It's Alive! The Federal Booker-Fix Debate Sirs, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

Seven years have passed since Justice Ginsburg do-si-doed from the merits majority to the remedial majority in Booker and transformed the Federal Sentencing Guidelines into an advisory system.' And despite the logical absurdity of the Scalian Sixth Amendment doctrine that produced this outcome,' and despite the expectation of folks like me that this marriage of fish and fowl could not long survive, it survives. What is more, a great many people whose opinion matters now claim to love it-or at least to like it well enough to want to keep it for the foreseeable future. Thus, the outburst of legislative …


Prolegomenon On The Status Of The Hopey, Changey Thing In American Criminal Justice, Frank O. Bowman Iii Dec 2010

Prolegomenon On The Status Of The Hopey, Changey Thing In American Criminal Justice, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

This is an introductory essay to Volume 23, Number 2, of the FEDERAL SENTENCING REPORTER, which considers the state of American criminal justice policy in 2010, two years after the "Change" election of 2008. Part I of the essay paints a statistical picture of trends in federal criminal practice and sentencing over the last half-decade or so, with particular emphasis on sentence severity and the degree of regional and inter-judge sentencing disparity. The statistics suggest that the expectation that the 2005 Booker decision would produce a substantial increase in the exercise of judicial sentencing discretion and a progressive abandonment of …


The Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines Project: Departures, Model Sentencing Guidelines §5.1, Frank O. Bowman Iii Jul 2006

The Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines Project: Departures, Model Sentencing Guidelines §5.1, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

This Article is the twelfth of twelve parts of a set of Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines designed to illustrate the feasibility and advantages of a simplified approach to federal sentencing proposed by the Constitution Project Sentencing Initiative. The Model Sentencing Guidelines and the Constitution Project report are all to be published in Volume 18, Number 5 of the Federal Sentencing Reporter. The project is described in an essay titled 'Tis a Gift To Be Simple: A Model Reform of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, available on SSRN at http://ssrn.com/abstract=927929. This segment of the project contains rules governing the imposition of sentences …


The Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines Project: A Simplified Economic Crimes Guideline, Model Sentencing Guidelines §2b1.1, Frank O. Bowman Iii Jan 2006

The Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines Project: A Simplified Economic Crimes Guideline, Model Sentencing Guidelines §2b1.1, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

This Article is the third of twelve parts of a set of Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines designed to illustrate the feasibility and advantages of a simplified approach to federal sentencing proposed by the Constitution Project Sentencing Initiative. The Model Sentencing Guidelines and the Constitution Project report are all to be published in Volume 18, Number 5 of the Federal Sentencing Reporter. The project is described in an essay titled 'Tis a Gift To Be Simple: A Model Reform of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, available on SSRN at http://ssrn.com/abstract=927929.


The Year Of Jubilee Or Maybe Not: Some Preliminary Observations About The Operation Of The Federal Sentencing System After Booker, Frank O. Bowman Iii Jan 2006

The Year Of Jubilee Or Maybe Not: Some Preliminary Observations About The Operation Of The Federal Sentencing System After Booker, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

This segment of the project contains the offense seriousness portion of the simplified sentencing table employed in the Model Sentencing Guidelines. The Article also contains drafter's commentary explaining the offense seriousness scale of the table, how it interacts with other portions of the Model Guidelines, and the policy choices behind the simplified table.


Beyond Bandaids: A Proposal For Reconfiguring Federal Sentencing After Booker, Frank O. Bowman Iii Jan 2005

Beyond Bandaids: A Proposal For Reconfiguring Federal Sentencing After Booker, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

This Article proposes a simplified sentencing table consisting of nine base sentencing ranges, each subdivided into three sub-ranges. The base sentencing range would be determined by combining offense facts found by a jury or admitted in a plea with the defendant's criminal history. A defendant's placement in the sub-ranges would be determined by post-conviction judicial findings of sentencing factors. No upward departures from the base sentencing range would be permissible, but defendants might be sentenced below the low end of the base sentencing range as a result of an acceptance of responsibility credit or due to a downward departure motion. …


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 …


Quiet Rebellion Ii: An Empirical Analysis Of Declining Federal Drug Sentences Including Data From The District Level With Michael Heise, Frank O. Bowman Iii, Michael Heise Jan 2002

Quiet Rebellion Ii: An Empirical Analysis Of Declining Federal Drug Sentences Including Data From The District Level With Michael Heise, Frank O. Bowman Iii, Michael Heise

Faculty Publications

This is the second of two articles in which we seek an explanation for the hitherto unexamined fact that the average length of prison sentences imposed in federal court for narcotics violations declined by more than 15% between 1991-92 and 2000.