Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
In deciding the sentence, the court will take into account a number of factors: the type of offence and how serious it is, the timing of any plea of guilty, the defendant's character and antecedents, including their criminal record and the defendant's personal circumstances such as their financial circumstances in the case of a fine being imposed.
The Guidelines are the product of the United States Sentencing Commission, which was created by the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984. [3] The Guidelines' primary goal was to alleviate sentencing disparities that research had indicated were prevalent in the existing sentencing system, and the guidelines reform was specifically intended to provide for determinate sentencing.
The sentence must be proportionate to the nature of the offence. The sentence must be reduced or increased depending on the mitigating and aggravating factors. The sentence must be similar to sentences imposed on similar offenders for similar offences in similar circumstances, but it remains open to the sentencing judge to deviate from the ...
Aggravating factors must be found by a jury. [17] Aggravating factors cannot be vague. [18] The sentencing decision-maker must have the authority to consider all mitigating factors. [19] Fourth, the Clause requires certain additional procedural rules in capital cases. For example, the jury must be permitted to consider a lesser included offense ...
If an aggravating circumstance exists in addition to first degree murder, the defendant can be charged with aggravated first-degree murder, which carries only one possible sentence life without parole. Aggravating factors include the killing of a law enforcement officer, murder for hire, or murder committed during the course of kidnapping, rape ...
30–60 years (sentence can exceed 60 years if there are aggravating circumstances; only an option if defendant was a juvenile) or life without parole Murder of a law enforcement officer Life without parole (if the defendant was a juvenile, a judge sets a term of 60 years)
The former star athlete who stabbed his ex-girlfriend and her mother in a frenzied parking lot attack in Florida last summer — before slashing his own throat — still had the scars of his ...
Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584 (1977) A death sentence may not be imposed for the crime of rape. Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S. 782 (1982) A death sentence may not be imposed on offenders who are involved in a felony during which a murder is committed but who do not actually kill, attempt to kill, or intend that a killing take place. Ford v.