Important new white-collar opinion justifying below-guideline sentence
As effectively covered in posts from at New York Federal Criminal Practice and White Collar Crime Prof Blog, District Judge Frederic Block issued an important new sentencing opinion in the white-collar case of US v. Parris, No. 05-CR-636 (EDNY Aug. 14, 2008) (available for downloading below). The opinion is a must-read defies easy summarization, but this starting paragraph provides the basics:
I have sentenced Lennox and Lester Parris today to a term of incarceration of 60 months in the face of an advisory guidelines range of 360 to life. This case represents another example where the guidelines in a securities-fraud prosecution “have so run amok that they are patently absurd on their face,” United States v. Adelson, 441 F. Supp. 2d 506, 515 (S.D.N.Y. 2006), due to the “kind of ‘piling-on’ of points for which the guidelines have frequently been criticized.” Id. at 510.