Vol. 37, Number 2 —February 2005

Post-Booker, Sentencing Documentation Continues

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s opinion, United States v. Booker, U.S. Sentencing Commission chair Judge Ricardo H. Hinojosa, and Judge Sim Lake, Chair of the Judicial Conference Criminal Law Committee, have written jointly to federal judges, clerks and chief probation officers, advising them of the importance of continuing to submit sentencing documents to the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

“The documentation will be useful to the Judiciary, the Commission, and the Congress,” Hinojosa and Lake wrote, “as we strive to continue to carry out the goals cited by the Supreme Court in Booker, to ‘provide certainty and fairness in meeting the purposes of sentencing [while] avoiding unwarranted sentencing disparities. . . [and] maintaining sufficient flexibility to permit individualized sentences when warranted.’”

Under current statutes, the chief judge in each district is required to submit to the USSC a report of sentence within 30 days of entry of judgment. Five specific sentencing documents are also required and must be included with the report. These are the judgment and commitment order, statement of reasons—including the reasons for any departures—any plea agreement, indictment or other charging document, and presentence report.

“It is particularly important that judges continue to comply with the requirements of 28 U.S.C. § 3553 ( c),” the judges wrote, “by providing a complete statement of reasons for imposing sentence. From the standpoint of the Commission and the Judiciary as a whole, it will be necessary to be able to capture information about any sentence that varies from the guidelines and the reasons for such a variance.”

The information in the statement of reasons also will assist the courts of appeals in reviewing sentences for reasonableness.

The judges note that in the coming weeks, the Commission will be working with the Criminal Law Committee to determine whether any of the sentencing forms will need revising.