Talk:United States Federal Sentencing Guidelines

(deleted discussion of someone's case) MKoltnow 06:15, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Untitled

The first paragraph reads as informally as someone's class notes. If anyone is able, please edit. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 12:56, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Sentencing table

The table's colors (center) tested for various forms of color-blindness.

If anyone can figure out a good way to make the sentencing table reflect the four zones (A, B, C and D), please provide suggestions. Perhaps we could color code the zones, if it's not possible to set up the borders as seen at http://www.ussc.gov/2009guid/5a_SenTab.htm ? Thanks, Tisane (talk) 00:45, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

The borders of the sentencing zones do not seem to be showing up properly unless you hit Print Preview. Would this version be better, do you think? Tisane (talk) 07:26, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

 Done In updating the table to 2012 data, I added colors. I took care to ensure that the chosen colors are safe for all forms of color-blindness, as shown in the image to the right, and discussed in more detail on the accompanying image's description page. Briefly, the chosen colors are in the center, surrounded by how they appear to various extremes of color-blindness, tested on [http:www.vischeck.com Vischeck.com]. Background colors do not show up when printed, so I kept the borders (shifted for 2012). I also beefed up the zone borders to 3px, as they were not printing in some browsers. Grollτech (talk) 02:05, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Can anyone explain the meaning of this paragraph?

(Removed from article)

Guidelines can either be indeterminate or determinate and depend on the year of the offense. Simply observing the top column on the sentencing table would lead one to believe that the guidelines would apply directly. However, they are divided into 5 sections depending on the year of the first offense and may be applied selectively. The Guidelines manual, therefore, needs to be read in the context of the previous guideline manuals in order to arrive at a sentencing determination. Conduct is irrelevant in the context of determinate guidelines while criminal history is irrelevant in the case of indeterminate guidelines.

I also removed this:

In general, indeterminate sentences are believed to support the rehabilitation and specific deterrence models of sentencing while determinate sentences are believed to support the general deterrence and just deserts models of sentencing.

Tisane (talk) 16:35, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Increased Sentence for a Domain Name?

There is this line in the current version of the article:

In addition, there are enhancements related to obstruction of justice, including obstructing or impeding the administration of justice, reckless endangerment during flight, commission of an offense while on release, and false registration of a domain name.

The last part seems out of place. I'm not sure though what the rational was for adding "false registration of a domain name". Was that part of some bigger case?

--CoverStory (talk) 22:59, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

This is a list of enhancements from Chapter 3 of the Guidelines Manual, the last of which (§3C1.4) is false registration of a domain name. This is from a directive to the Commission from Congress, regarding defendants that receive a sentencing enhancement under 18 U.S.C. § 3559(g)(1).

198.70.8.13 (talk) 21:01, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

References 1 and 2

produce a 404 not found. Here's the 2010 guidelines: http://www.ussc.gov/Guidelines/2010_guidelines/index.cfm. I don't know how to fix it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.191.222.47 (talk) 20:17, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

 Done hopefully the 404's are all fixed now, let us know if not. Thanks!Grollτech (talk) 12:41, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Offense level

In the Insider trading article, i read that it "has a base offense level of 8, which puts it in Zone A under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines", where "U.S. Sentencing Guidelines" linked to here. Reading this article, i suppose that "base level" is what is called here "offense level". I am now wondering whether 8 is on the low side or the high side of the scale: is level 1 more of an offense than level 43, or the other way around? Secondly, this article does not seems to correlate the offense levels to the zones, as in the "…which puts it in Zone A…". --Jerome Potts (talk) 03:42, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Actually, everything you asked about is covered in the article. If you look at the "Sentencing table", the rows correspond to the offense level. Looking at row 8, we see that it is indeed the last row in "Zone A", which are the lesser offenses. From the section entitled "Zones", we learn that "Zone A consists of sentencing ranges of 0–6 months", and that "a defendant in Zone A is eligible for Federal Probation, and no term of imprisonment is required."

Now, looking back at the table, the various columns correspond to the defendant's past criminal history, as defined under "Criminal history". Therefore, depending on the defendant's history, a conviction for offense level 8 would get them anywhere from "0–6 months" for someone with no prior history, up to "18–24 months" for a career criminal.

Then, of course, there are "Adjustments" such as mitigating factors and aggravating factors, many of which are particular to the offense. For those, you'd need to reference the 2012 Federal Sentencing Guidelines Manual itself. Finally, there are "Departures", which are specific criteria that allow a judge to deviate. Absent a departure criterion, the Federal "Guidelines" are anything but guidelines… in fact, a Federal judge must stick to the formula as prescribed in the table.

Last but not least, there is the "Fines" table, which shows that offense level 8 carries a minimum fine of $1,000 and a maximum of $10,000.

Hope that helps! Grollτech (talk) 06:55, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Incidentally, to continue with this example, I looked up the "adjustments" for insider trading, which can be found in §2B1.4 of the Manual:

(1) If the gain resulting from the offense exceeded $5,000, increase by the number of levels from the table in §2B1.1 (Theft, Property Destruction, and Fraud) corresponding to that amount.

(2) If the offense involved an organized scheme to engage in insider trading and the offense level determined above is less than level 14, increase to level 14.

So, for example, if the person gained $100,000 through insider trading, you would add 8 to the base offense level of 8, giving an offense level of 16. The sentence would therefore jump up to 21–27 months for a person with no priors, or 46–57 months for the career criminal. Grollτech (talk) 12:17, 18 May 2013 (UTC)