Friday night (sentencing) lights

Two circuit rulings from late Friday provide remarkable illumination of many remarkable modern federal sentencing realities:

• From the Fifth Circuit, US v. Perrin, No. 06-30115 (5th Cir. Feb. 9, 2007) (available here) is another example of a circuit court reversing a below-guideline sentence as unreasonable and also showcases another variation on my offense/offender ideas.  The defendant in Perrin is a college kid who possessed a lot of “unusually reprehensible” child pornography.  With a focus on the offender, the sentencing judge imposed a sentence well below the applicable guideline; with a focus on the offense, the Fifth Circuit panel reversed and requires resentencing.

• From the Tenth Circuit, US v. Medley, No. 06-30115 (5th Cir. Feb. 9, 2007) (available herehere), affirms a sentence that got longer after the defendant won her initial sentencing appeal.  What makes the Medley decision really sing is a fantastic concurrence by Judge McConnell which has a lovely mixture of analysis and advice concerning how resentencings may often play out because the “current system of sentencing” may have “a systematic bias in favor of higher sentences on remand from successful appeals, even successful appeals by the defendant.”

Judge McConnell’s work in Medley is so great that I’ll have another post with additional analysis coming soon.