The question in the title of this post is prompted by all the intense Court-packing talk that I am seeing in some quarters this morning, combined with my hope that Justice Amy Coney Barrett might ultimately follow the path of the late Justice Antonin Scalia in developing a more rights-friendly jurisprudence regarding the Fourth and Fifth and Sixth Amendments.  Long-time readers know that Justice Scalia (as well as Justice Thomas) played critical roles in expanding…

This local article, headlined “Newsom, California district attorneys seek tighter standards for application of death penalty,” reports on a notable new court filing by Governor of California. Here are the details: Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has already declared a moratorium on executions in California, went a step further Monday with an unprecedented court filing that asserted the state’s death penalty law is applied in a racist manner against African Americans. Newsom’s state Supreme Court…

Regular readers know I have been complaining for many months about the general failure of the US Sentencing Commission to address or release data concerning the COVID state of federal sentencing (example here).  But as of today, I cannot complain quite so much because the US Sentencing Commission has just released here its “3rd Quarter … Preliminary Fiscal Year 2020 Data Through June 30, 2020.” These new data provide the first official accounting of…

The title of this post is the title of this notable paper authored by Kerrel Murray and available via SSRN.  I flagged this paper in a long list when it first showed up earlier this year.  But with so much voting going on these days, I thought it now especially timely to note the paper again and reprint its abstract: No one doubts that prosecutors may sometimes decline prosecution notwithstanding factual guilt.  Everyone expects prosecutors…

As I understand matters, the US Senate is poised to confirm Amy Coney Barrett as the next US Supreme Court Justice and the only confirmation question seems to be how many Senate votes she will get on Monday.  But, of course, the big jurisprudential question for sentencing fans is how might a Justice Barrett approach a range of criminal justice issues as an avowed originalist jurist.  The late Justice Scalia and current Justices Alito, Gorsuch,…

Every election is important for the fate and future of criminal justice reform, but every even-year Fall it is hard not to get caught up in the notion that this year’s election is uniquely significant and consequential.  As I noted in this prior post, the discussion at the last Prez debate leads me to be (foolishly?) hopeful that we will see some follow up to the FIRST STEP Act or some other form of…

The title of this post is the title of this interesting new piece authored by Josh Bowers available via SSRN.  Here is its abstract: We accept uncritically the “recidivist premium,” which is the notion that habitual offenders are particularly blameworthy and should be punished harshly.  In this article, I question that assumption and propose a radical alternative.  Consider the individual punished repeatedly for hopping subway turnstiles.  As convictions accumulate, sentences rise — to weeks and…