A quick sentencing tour around the circuits

Compared to all the ground-breaking circuit action earlier this month (highlights here and here), the federal appellate courts have been a little quieter this week.  Nevertheless, in addition to interesting Booker work in the Ninth Circuit noted here and here, other circuits have been churning out sentencing opinions of potential significance.  Helpfully,  Appellate Law & Practice, Decision of the Day, and the Federal Defender Blogs do a fine job keeping up with a lot of the action I may miss.

In addition to noting these terrifically helpful blogosphere resources, I wanted to spotlight the work of the Sixth Circuit this week.  The Sixth Circuit’s clarification of reasonableness review in McBride (details here) is worth a close read from everyone trying to make sense of this amorphous concept.  And, the Sixth Circuit in the last two days has also covered important related ground in US v. Till, No. 04-2128 (6th Cir. Jan. 20, 2006) (available here) and in Logan v. US, No. 04-5325 (6th Cir. Jan. 19, 2006) (available here).