Two great sentencing opinions from the true heartland

I am pleased this afternoon to spotlight two strong recent sentencing opinions from Chief District Judge Joseph Bataillon in US v. Baird and US v. McCormick.  This summary of Baird comes from a helpful reader:

I don’t think you have already posted this case on your cite, but there’s a great discussion of Kimbrough and the sentencing guidelines in Judge Bataillon’s decision in US v. Baird, No. 8:07CR204, 2008 WL 151258, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2338 (D. Neb. Jan. 11, 2008). I believe it is one of the most informative and developed discussions of Kimbrough since the decision came out last month.  In reference to the sentencing guidelines for child-exploitation offenses, Judge Bataillon observes that those guidelines were not developed under an empirical approach, and accordingly he “affords them less deference than it would to empirically-grounded guidelines.”

Helpfully, today’s McCormick opinion, US v. McCormick, No. 8:04CR218 (D. Neb. Jan. 29, 2008) (available for download below) covers similar post-Gall/Kimbrough ground in the third sentencing experience for the defendant.  The defendant in McCormick was initialy sentences before Booker, then resentenced (to a lower term) between Booker and Gall, but had to be resentenced yet again because the Eighth Circuit had reversed the second sentence.  Particulars aside, as the reader quote above highlights, Judge Bataillon does a strong job describing the current state of federal sentencing law at pp. 7-14 of the McCormick opinion.

Download mccormick_opinion.pdf