Add to ORKGFederal appellate courts are currently split on the definition of “controlled substance” in the career offender guideline, with one side using federal law to define the phrase, and the other side allowing standalone state law offenses to trigger the guideline. Allowing state law to define the phrase allows countless substances Congress never intended to penalize to be able to trigger one of the most severe penalties in the Sentencing Guidelines. This Note assesses the landscape of the circuit split and analyzes the arguments for and against federally defining “controlled substance offense.” This Note then proposes a novel way to resolve the circuit split using the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Labonte to federally define “con...
This Term, Cunningham v. California offers the Supreme Court a rare opportunity to bring order to it...
[Excerpt] “Until the passage of the U.S. Federal Sentencing Guidelines in 1984, federal judges had r...
Although it represents an impressive intellectual effort, the present federal sentencing structure i...
Guilty pleas have come to resolve all but a fraction of federal criminal cases. So for most federal ...
This Article discusses the sensibility of each of these three options. Part II sets forth a hypothet...
In 2010, the Fair Sentencing Act (“FSA”) increased the quantities triggering mandatory minimums for ...
There are currently over 175,000 federal inmates in the United States, 146,000 of whom are held in c...
Now that it has been more than four years since Senate Bill 2 became effective, this is a good time ...
Since 1986, the country has been witness to a revolution in federal sentencing practice: indetermina...
Vagueness, as the word suggests, is inherently uncertain. This Note addresses the issues of vaguenes...
The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that in determining whether a prior cr...
The now-infamous “War on Drugs” campaign of the 1980s culminated in the adoption of the Anti-Drug Ab...
Critics of harsh drug sentencing laws in the United States typically focus on long prison sentences....
America is currently facing a major crisis with prison overcrowding and operating costs that exceed ...
The Eighth Circuit in United States v. Tolliver, relying in part on amendment 651, reached the corre...
This Term, Cunningham v. California offers the Supreme Court a rare opportunity to bring order to it...
[Excerpt] “Until the passage of the U.S. Federal Sentencing Guidelines in 1984, federal judges had r...
Although it represents an impressive intellectual effort, the present federal sentencing structure i...
Guilty pleas have come to resolve all but a fraction of federal criminal cases. So for most federal ...
This Article discusses the sensibility of each of these three options. Part II sets forth a hypothet...
In 2010, the Fair Sentencing Act (“FSA”) increased the quantities triggering mandatory minimums for ...
There are currently over 175,000 federal inmates in the United States, 146,000 of whom are held in c...
Now that it has been more than four years since Senate Bill 2 became effective, this is a good time ...
Since 1986, the country has been witness to a revolution in federal sentencing practice: indetermina...
Vagueness, as the word suggests, is inherently uncertain. This Note addresses the issues of vaguenes...
The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that in determining whether a prior cr...
The now-infamous “War on Drugs” campaign of the 1980s culminated in the adoption of the Anti-Drug Ab...
Critics of harsh drug sentencing laws in the United States typically focus on long prison sentences....
America is currently facing a major crisis with prison overcrowding and operating costs that exceed ...
The Eighth Circuit in United States v. Tolliver, relying in part on amendment 651, reached the corre...
This Term, Cunningham v. California offers the Supreme Court a rare opportunity to bring order to it...
[Excerpt] “Until the passage of the U.S. Federal Sentencing Guidelines in 1984, federal judges had r...
Although it represents an impressive intellectual effort, the present federal sentencing structure i...