Local Sentencing Updates

In the Jan. 17th. issue of the National Law Journal (subscription) it was prophecised that following the Supreme Court's Booker/Fanfan decision "the key to whether federal sentencing guidelines retained any real effect for defendants and prosecutors may now rest with the federal appellate courts," and how they were going to define a "reasonable sentence." According to recent articles, such as one on Law.com last month (subscription), federal courts remain in something of a holding pattern.

More of us are more directly concerned with state level aspects of the sentencing issue, and moreso with local cases.

In two Michigan cases back in October, State v. Hanf and State v. Sam, both DUI cases having a question of whether the "correct sentence" was incarceration or probation, it was held that "the traditional role of the jury has never been to determine which defendantrs go to prison and which do not... an offender's amenability to probation is not a fact which increases the offender's penalty."

Indiana's supreme court, last week, ruled that parts of the state's sentencing laws were unconstitutional, forbiding judges from going beyond standard parameters without a jury's approval, but, as did the U.S. Supreme Court, stopping shy of throwing out the sentencing guidelines altogether. (See Houser v. State of Indiana, Case 57S00-0310-CR-433).

Indiana Senate Bill 96, however, could remedy the constitutionality of their sentencing system.


Finally, a Cincinnati Enquirer article yesterday reported the 1st. District Court of Appeals' pair of decisions that held "Hamilton County Common Pleas judges can impose only a minimum sentence for anyone who has never spent time in prison, and cannot impose a maximum prison term." [See State v. Montgomery, 2005-Ohio-1018 and State v. Bruce, 2005-Ohio-373]