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Virginia: Defendant entitled to new sentencing hearing after the jury recommended an illegally high sentence.

By Marks & Katz, LLC

In Virginia, the jury decides guilt-innocence, and recommends a sentence in the event of a conviction.  Jerome Rawls was sentenced to 25 years in prison on the jury's recommendation, for second degree murder. At the time of sentencing, Rawls's lawyer, the prosecutor, and the trial judge mistakenly thought that the then-existing forty-year maximum sentence (instituted in 1993) applied, but instead the twenty-year maximum applied, as it existed at the time of the 1992 crime. Last Friday, Virginia's Supreme Court rejected simply reducing Rawls's sentence from 25 years to the twenty-year statutory maximum to remedy the situation. Rawls v. Virginia, __ Va. __ (Sept. 25, 2009). The Supreme Court held that to do so would violate Rawls's full right to a jury trial, and ordered a new sentencing hearing, which means he will be entitled to have a jury a the hearing...continue to full post

Full post as published by Underdog on September 29, 2009 (boomark / email).