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Practical Magic: A Few Down-To-Earth Suggestions For The New Sentencing Commission, Frank O. Bowman Iii Oct 1999

Practical Magic: A Few Down-To-Earth Suggestions For The New Sentencing Commission, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

Most of the contributions to this outpouring of advice to the new Sentencing Commissioners have to do with the substance of the Guidelines. What follows here is far more prosaic - some suggestions not about what the Commission should do, but about how the Commission should work. I make these suggestions with some trepidation, recognizing the difficulty of the task the new members have undertaken. However, I hope the perspective of one who practiced before and after the Guidelines as a federal prosecutor, participated in the internal workings of the Commission as Special Counsel in 1995-96, and has been a …


High Crimes And Misdemeanors: Defining The Constitutional Limits On Presidential Impeachment, Frank O. Bowman Iii, Stephen L. Sepinuck Oct 1999

High Crimes And Misdemeanors: Defining The Constitutional Limits On Presidential Impeachment, Frank O. Bowman Iii, Stephen L. Sepinuck

Faculty Publications

This Article had its genesis in a statement by the authors submitted to the House Judiciary Committee during its proceedings regarding the impeachment of President Clinton. This final much expanded version appears after the conclusion of the Clinton impeachment proceedings in the Senate, and it is certainly informed by the course those proceedings took. Strictly speaking, however, this is not an article “about” the Clinton impeachment. Although this Article draws some conclusions from the treatment by the House and Senate of the fundamental allegations against President Clinton, it does not address in detail the specific facts underlying those allegations. The …


Departing Is Such Sweet Sorrow: A Year Of Judicial Revolt On "Substantial Assistance" Departures Follows A Decade Of Prosecutorial Indiscipline (Prosecution Law Symposium), Frank O. Bowman Iii Jul 1999

Departing Is Such Sweet Sorrow: A Year Of Judicial Revolt On "Substantial Assistance" Departures Follows A Decade Of Prosecutorial Indiscipline (Prosecution Law Symposium), Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

the first section of this essay is devoted to demonstrating the courts' errors. Nonetheless, considered together, these opinions are perhaps an understandable reflection of judicial unease with an important component of the federal sentencing system — the longstanding, but increasingly common, practice of making deals with criminal defendants to reduce their sentences in return for testimony against their accomplices. This Article's second section will consider the most common criticisms of the system of bargaining for testimony under the United States Sentencing Guidelines (the Guidelines) to determine whether Singleton and Sealed Case may be good policy even if they are bad …


Defending Substantial Assistance: An Old Prosecutor's Meditation On Singleton, Sealed Case, And The Maxfield-Kramer Report, Frank O. Bowman Iii Jul 1999

Defending Substantial Assistance: An Old Prosecutor's Meditation On Singleton, Sealed Case, And The Maxfield-Kramer Report, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

This essay begins with a brief analysis of the panel and en banc opinions in Sealed Case and Singleton, and then turns to the more arresting question of whether the panel decisions were transitory aberrations or something more. Particularly if one considers Singleton and Sealed Case together with the Sentencing Commission's staff report on substantial assistance practice (the “Maxfield - Kramer Report”), it is difficult to escape the conclusion that unease with the current substantial assistance regime is growing. Unlike many observers, I view §5K1.1 as a very good thing, an invaluable prosecutorial tool against group criminality, but a tool …