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Sentencing commissioners get mixed advice on removing departures from the Guidelines; many urge preserving deleted text for courts
Summary
The commission's simplification proposal to eliminate formal 'departure' provisions drew broad support from practitioners and defenders as aligning the manual with post-Booker practice, while the Department of Justice and advisory groups urged preserving deleted departure language (for example, via an appendix) to satisfy congressional directives
The commission's proposal to simplify the Guidelines by removing formal "departure" provisions and aligning the manual with post-Booker sentencing practice drew substantial, detailed comment at a public hearing.
Practitioners' groups and defenders strongly supported elimination of departure text from the main body of the manual, arguing the departure step is rarely used in practice and that judges now rely primarily on 18 U.S.C. §3553(a) variances. "Courts that we appear before largely rely on the variance process as opposed to the departure process," Natasha Sen, chair of the Practitioners Advisory Group, said. Several defenders urged the…
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