Departing Is Such Sweet Sorrow: A Year of Judicial Revolt on "Substantial Assistance" Departures Follows a Decade of Prosecutorial Indiscipline (Prosecution Law Symposium)

Authors

Frank O. Bowman III, University of Missouri School of LawFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Summer 1999

Abstract

the first section of this essay is devoted to demonstrating the courts' errors. Nonetheless, considered together, these opinions are perhaps an understandable reflection of judicial unease with an important component of the federal sentencing system — the longstanding, but increasingly common, practice of making deals with criminal defendants to reduce their sentences in return for testimony against their accomplices. This Article's second section will consider the most common criticisms of the system of bargaining for testimony under the United States Sentencing Guidelines (the Guidelines) to determine whether Singleton and Sealed Case may be good policy even if they are bad law.

Recommended Citation

Frank O. Bowman III, Departing Is Such Sweet Sorrow: A Year of Judicial Revolt on "Substantial Assistance" Departures Follows A Decade of Prosecutorial Indiscipline, 29 Stetson L. Rev. 7 (1999)