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Timely reflections on sentencing retroactivity

By Douglas A. Berman

As Congress considers reducing crack sentences and state work on reducing their prison population, the retroactive application of new sentencing rules that reduce sentences is an especially important issue these days.  Consequently, I was pleased to see this timely new piece on SSRN by S. David Mitchell, titled "In With the New, Out With the Old: Expanding the Scope of Retroactive Amelioration." Here is the abstract: The legislative decision to amend a statute and reduce a sentence but not to apply it retroactively to pending prosecutions or to finalized convictions is in accord with the principles of retroactivity, but contrary to legitimate goals of punishment, i.e. deterrence and retributivism.  Genarlow Wilson, convicted at seventeen of aggravated child molestation, a felony, for consensual oral sex with a fifteen-year old classmate, was sentenced to a mandatory minimum of ten years...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on August 11, 2009 (boomark / email).