How Unreliable Factfinding Can Undermine Sentencing Guidelines
Peter B. Pope · The Yale Law Journal · 1986
Over the last decade, forces from across the political spectrum have been attacking sentence disparity-the sentencing of like cases differently.'Most frequently, disparity is attributed to the enormous discretion that judges have enjoyed in imposing sentences. 2 With little statutory guidance' and virtually no appellate review, 4 sentencing judges in most jurisdictions have been left to themselves to decide what facts about a crime or a criminal are at all relevant to a sentence, and how those facts ought to affect