One sign of COVID fatigue for me is my tendency now to just keep scrolling past new press stories about the ugly (new and old) realities of prisons and jails during this persistent pandemic.  But, especially because COVID fear and not just fatigue is a felt reality for many millions of incarcerated persons and corrections staff and their families every day, I still should keep rounding up prison-COVID press pieces on a regular basis.  And,…

I just noticed that the US Sentencing Commission today released this updated new version of its data report titled “First Step Act of 2018 Resentencing Provisions Retroactivity Data Report.” The introduction to the report provides this context and overview: On December 21, 2018, the President signed into law the First Step Act of 2018.  Section 404 of that act provides that any defendant sentenced before the effective date of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010…

I flagged in this post from June my sense that the Supreme Court has become particularly (and problematically) quiet on sentencing matters.  This feeling continues with this morning’s new SCOTUS order list in which the Court granted cert on three new cases, but denied cert without comment in the Demma reasonableness review case flagged here.  I suppose the coming oral arguments in Borden v. US, No. 19-5410 (another ACCA application case), and especially…

The title of this post is the title of this notable new paper available via SSRN and authored by Meredith Rountree and Mary Rose. Here is its abstract: Jurors exercise unique legal power when they are called upon to decide whether to sentence someone to death.  The Supreme Court emphasizes the central role of the jury’s moral judgment in making this sentencing decision, noting that it is the jurors who are ‘best able to express…

A few years ago, in this article titled “Reflecting on Parole’s Abolition in the Federal Sentencing System,” I explained why I thought “parole might serve as an efficient and effective means to at least partially ameliorate long-standing concerns about mandatory minimum statutes and dysfunctional guidelines” and why sentencing reformers “ought to think about talking up the concept of federal parole anew.”  My basic thinking is that parole can and sometimes will usefully serve as a…