Legal Change and Sentencing Norms in Federal Court: An Examination of the Impact of the Booker, Gall, and Kimbrough Decisions.

摘要

This project examines how federal drug trafficking cases are sentenced under a rapidly changing federal justice system. The federal sentencing guidelines have lost their authoritative force since the US Supreme Court in US v. Booker (2005), Gall v. US (2007) and Kimbrough v. US (2007) declared that the guidelines are merely advisory in determining criminal sentences in federal court. As a result of these decisions, judges are now free to impose sentences other than those prescribed by the Guidelines, so long as they explicitly justify and explain their reasons for the variance. This research is designed to look specifically at how, and to what extent, federal sentencing has changed over time due to the Booker, Gall, and Kimbrough decisions, as well as prior policy reforms. It is particularly focused on change at the district level, and examines sentencing practices over time in the use of Guidelines sentencing as well as mandatory minimum sentencing (which was not directly impacted by the Booker line of cases).