New US Sentencing Commission information resources just before USSC meeting to inform on new policy priorities and 2024 amendment retroactivity
-
Selected Supreme Court Cases on Sentencing Issues (August 7): This document provides brief summaries of selected Supreme Court and appellate court cases that involve the guidelines and other aspects of federal sentencing.
-
Sentencing Practice Talk Podcast Relaunch (August 7): In this highly anticipated return of Sentencing Practice Talk, Commission staff introduce listeners to the nuts and bolts of the HelpLine and share common guideline application questions.
These two helpful USSC resourses serve as a kind of a savory snack before the main Commission meal to be served up at the scheduled public hearing tomorrow afternoon with this official agenda:
- Report of the Chair
- Possible Vote to Adopt April 2024 Meeting Minutes
- Possible Vote on Final 2024–2025 Policy Priorities
- Possible Vote on Retroactivity of Certain 2024 Amendments
- Adjourn
Though there surely are many federal prisonsers, judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys quite eager to see the results of the expected vote on the retroactivity of certain 2024 guideline amendments, I am particularly eager to hear about the Commission’s plans for its 2024–2025 policy priorities. As I have noted in some prior posts, the the Commission, after two years of intricate work on a range of pressing issues, has sought comment and signalled its interest in taking a big-picture look at the full federal sentencing system and the Commission’s own work therein. The Commission received well over 1000 pages of comments, and I am wondering just how they plan to sort this all out.
Notably, over at the new Sentencing Matters Substack, former Justice Deparment and USSC ex-officio member Jonathan Wroblewski wrote this recent post on these matter titled “Reasoned Agency Decisionmaking and the Upcoming Announcement of the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s Policy and Research Priorities for the 2024-25 Guideline Amendment Year.” I would recommend his post in full, and here is how it concludes:
I believe the Commission did a great thing in opening up the priority-setting process and soliciting such wide-ranging input. It is an example of good government at work.
But as with most good deeds, this one will not go unpunished. The Commission now owes it to those who took the time to answer its call, and also to Congress, the Executive Branch, and the public at large, to share with all of us, in some detail and reasoned explanation, its reaction to the recommendations and its choices on how it will proceed. The Commission should, in light of everything it has now heard, set forth how — and why — it has charted a research and policy development course not just for the coming nine months, but for the next several years. This is also part of good government and good agency practice — see, e.g., Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Assn. of United States, Inc. v. State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29, 43 (1983) — and I hope it will be the written product of the Commission’s August 8th meeting.
Professors Berman, Chanenson, and I submitted our recommendations to the Commission too, which you can find immediately below. We come down on the “broad systemic review” side of the recommendation spectrum, and we urge the Commission to engage in what the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code: Sentencing refers to as an “omnibus review;” an examination of the Guidelines system, over the coming few years — and based on the experience of the last four decades — in order to forge a new era of federal sentencing policies and practices for the years ahead.
The Commission deserves credit for inviting us all in to be part of its research and policy making process. But now, the Commission ought to transparently share with us what it thinks of all the ideas it has received and how it intends to shape the coming decades of federal sentencing research and policy. This is part of what “reasoned decisionmaking” for an administrative agency is all about. Michigan v. EPA, 576 U.S. 743, 750 (2015).