We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

SENTENCE ON REMAND IS REASONABLE… JUST BARELY

Jared Sawyer was sentenced for sex-related offenses to 30 years in federal prison. Last year, the 2nd Circuit threw out the sentence as being substantively unreasonable, calling it “shockingly high given Sawyer’s harrowing upbringing and comparatively low danger to the community.” On remand, the district court disagreed with the appellate court analysis, but found that Sawyer’s good prison record justified a reduction to 25 years.

Last week, the 2nd Circuit grudgingly upheld Sawyer’s new sentence. The Court wrote that Sawyer’s second appeal “continues to protest the reasonableness of his sentence, but we cannot bring ourselves to call it shocking under governing law. He faced a mandatory minimum of fifteen years. Regrettably, twenty‐five years is no great departure from sentences routinely imposed in federal courts for comparable offenses… In 2010 – the most recent year for which data is available – the average sentence for production of child pornography was 267.1 months, or approximately 22 years. The sentence is barbaric without being all that unusual.”

One of the three judges dissented, complaining that the district court failed to provide reasons for the sentence that would reasonably support the sentence. Here, the dissent said, “we have already considered the principal reasons offered at both sentencings and found them to be insufficient to support the original sentence. That sentence has been re‐imposed — reduced only by an unrelated factor not previously available. By failing to enforce its original mandate, the majority denies the defendant a sentence that fairly addresses the reasons which we previously identified as critical to a just sentence.”

United States v. Sawyer, Case No. 15‐2276‐cr (2nd Cir. Oct. 26, 2018)

– Thomas L. Root