Seeking news on “alternative sentencing”

Last month, in the wake of the Fourth Circuit’s ruling in Hammoud which recommended that district judges “announce, at the time of sentencing, a sentence pursuant to 18 U.S.C.A. § 3553(a), treating the guidelines as advisory only,” I wondered here whether anyone is keeping track of alternative sentences announced in the Fourth Circuit and elsewhere after Blakely. I continue to hope that somebody is tracking the alternative sentencing story — perchance the US Sentencing Commission — because data on how judges are sentencing when “treating the guidelines as advisory only” will likely be very valuable no matter what the Supreme Court does in Booker and Fanfan.

I am also wondering whether the Fourth Circuit’s recommendation is actually being followed. Recall that US District Joseph Goodwin of the Southern District of West Virginia thoughtfully explained here why he considered alternative sentencing inappropriate, and that Professor Ronald Wright reported back in August here that most district judges in the Fourth Circuit had not been announcing alternative sentences.

I am now thinking about these matters because an unpublished decision by the Fourth Circuit yesterday suggests that the circuit court itself is not a true believer in alternative sentencing. In US v. Johnson, 2004 U.S. App. LEXIS 21707 (4th Cir.Oct. 19, 2004), the court dropped a footnote in which, after summarily rejecting a Blakely claim by citing Hammoud, the court said it did “not deem it necessary to remand the case so that the district court may announce an alternative sentence.”

I continue to suspect that alternative sentencing works better in theory than in practice, but I obviously have no direct “in the courtroom” experience to support this supposition. I hope others working in the Fourth Circuit or elsewhere might use the comments to share any “in the courtroom” experiences with alternative sentencing.