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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.
Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575 (1990), was a U.S. Supreme Court decision that filled in an important gap in the federal criminal law of sentencing. The federal criminal code does not contain a definition of many crimes, including burglary, the crime at issue in this case.
The Maryland General Assembly has charged the commission to "adopt existing sentencing guidelines for sentencing within the limits established by law which shall be considered by the sentencing court in determining the appropriate sentence for defendants who plead guilty or nolo contendere to, or who were found guilty of crimes in a circuit court."
[17] The "Drugs Minus Two Amendment" changed the U.S. Federal Sentencing Guidelines to "reduce the applicable sentencing guideline range for most federal drug trafficking offenses." [ 17 ] The Commission voted to make the Amendment retroactive on July 18, 2014, "thereby allowing eligible offenders serving a previously imposed term of ...
Sentencing guidelines define a recommended sentencing range for a criminal defendant, based upon characteristics of the defendant and of the criminal charge. Depending upon the jurisdiction, sentencing guidelines may be nonbinding, or their application may be mandatory for the criminal offenses that they cover.
Before the term "home invasion" came into use, the term "hot burglary" was often used in the literature. Early references also use "burglary of occupied homes" [10] and "burglar striking an occupied residence." [11] In 2008 Connecticut Congressman Chris Murphy proposed making home invasion a federal crime in the United States. [12] [13]
Johanna Robinson, a member of the Sentencing Council, called the new guidelines "a really important recognition of the harm that occurs within strangulation and suffocation".
The exception to this rule occurs when the court determines that such use would violate the ex post facto clause of the Constitution – in other words, if the sentencing guidelines have changed so as to increase the penalty "after the fact", so that the sentence is more severe on the sentencing date than was established on the date that the ...