Tag Archives: criminal justice act

Cleaning Up Before The Long Weekend – Update for May 27, 2022

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

IT’S ACADEMIC

Study Finds Judges Inconsistent in Granting Compassionate Release: lawyerjoke180807Only a lawyer (or brilliant law student in this case) could require 44 pages and 194 footnotes to conclude the obvious: district courts are all over the map on granting or denying compassionate release due to the inmate’s vaccination status.

A Columbia Law Review Note published last week finds “disparate outcomes resulting from the vast judicial discretion within the compassionate release space” on the treatment of compassionate release movants on the basis of their vaccination status. The Note “argues that the current system results in inequitable geographical-based outcomes” and “calls on the United States Sentencing Commission to offer guidance to federal courts on how to approach compassionate release requests in the context of the First Step Act and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.”

Columbia Law Review, Unequal Treatment: (In)compassionate Release from Federal Prison in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Vaccine (May 13, 2022)

Have You Kissed Your Public Defender Today? An Urban Institute study released last week found that defendants represented by Criminal Justice Act panel attorneys (those appointed by the court) and private counsel have 18-25% greater odds of being sent to prison once convicted than those represented by a federal public defender. What’s more, “individuals represented by private and CJA panel attorneys received 4-8% longer sentences than those who used a public defender.”

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The study concludes that because federal public defenders have “specific expertise in federal criminal cases and more familiarity with the judges and prosecutors,” they may be “more likely to encourage their clients to take plea deals but may also secure their clients favorable sentencing outcomes.”

Urban Institute, Counsel Type in Federal Criminal Court Cases, 2015-18 (May 18, 2022)

– Thomas L. Root