The complications of federal sentencing and federalism

Three items I noticed this morning provide a great primer (and perhaps great fodder for scholarship) on the ways in which federalism issues can create complications for federal sentencing.

1.  The Sixth Circuit this morning in US v. Malone, No. 06-2099 (6th Cir. Oct. 4, 2007) (available here), reverses a defendant’s below-guideline sentence holding “that a district court’s consideration of a defendant’s possible state court sentence as part of its sentencing calculus is improper and renders the resulting sentence unreasonable.”

2.  The Boston Globe this morning has this interesting article discussing a brouhaha over a state judge vacating a prior state conviction in an effort to impact federal sentencing realities.  As the article explains, federal prosecutors “said they were stunned when [the defendant] showed up in federal court for his sentencing on cocaine charges later that afternoon and his lawyer announced that his old conviction had been dismissed, meaning that instead of facing 21 to 27 years in prison on the federal charges, he would face less than two years.”

3.  On SSRN, Randy Barnett has this short piece entitled “Three Federalisms,” which spotlights that the “importance of federalism are often obscured by the fact that there are not one, but three distinct versions of constitutional federalism that have arisen since the Founding.”  I wonder which versions of federalism would approve (or disapprove) of the Malone ruling and the happenings in Boston.