Sentencing Guidelines Commission debates re-rankings for great-bodily-harm and motor-vehicle offenses

The Sentencing Guidelines Commission on May 8 reviewed a staff paper analyzing how the commission ranks offenses that result in great bodily harm and discussed possible re-rankings and statutory changes.

The staff presentation, led by Director Wright, said the paper examines offenses “horizontally” — comparing different offenses that produce the same level of harm — and identified what staff called several outliers in the commission’s grid, including high rankings for some misdemeanor-based assaults that produce great bodily harm and comparatively low rankings for certain vehicular-related offenses that result in the same level of harm.

Commissioners focused on three clusters: criminal vehicular homicide (CVH), criminal vehicular operation (CVO) resulting in great bodily harm, and related DWI offenses. Staff said there is broad support among respondents to keep most CVH offenses at…