Booker insights around the blogsphere

The blogsphere is teeming with Booker buzz providing all sorts of interesting federal sentencing insights and food-for-thought:

• Peter Henning at the White Collar Crime Prof Blog has this post commenting on what Booker could mean for the Enron Nigerian Barge case (which I discussed earlier today at the end of this post), and has an especially interesting post here discussing a post-Booker plea agreement providing for a “stipulated sentencing range that, if not followed by the judge, permits either party to withdraw from the plea bargain.”  Peter rightly ponders whether this sort of plea term will work to tether judges to the guidelines and how judges might now respond to such tethering.

• The fine folks at the Ninth Circuit Blog provide here a very useful and lengthy outline of federal Booker decisions that have come out as of January 30, 2005, as well as an amicus curiae letter brief filed on behalf of the NACDL in US v. Ameline in this post.

• The Second Circuit Blog here notes a peculiar post-Booker guidelines ruling from the Second Circuit which makes no mention whatsoever of Booker even though the case involved judicial fact-finding.

I hope to be able to do some commentary (and thinking out loud) about both the plea argeement item and also the Second Circuit’s Booker-silent ruling later today.