Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Bennardo on Aggregate Grouping under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines
Kevin Bennardo (LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center) has posted A Quantity-Driven Solution to Aggregate Grouping under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The United States Sentencing Guidelines Manual mandates the grouping of many multiple counts of conviction on an aggregate basis. In these instances, the Guidelines aggregate a specific quality of the multiple counts — often the amount of drugs or money — and determine the punishment based on the aggregated quantity.
This article first undertakes a review of the purposes of grouping under the Guidelines and concludes that grouping under the Guidelines’ other grouping provisions should precede grouping on an aggregate basis in order to minimize the influence of prosecutorial charging decisions.
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/crimprof_blog/2012/10/bennardo-on-aggregate-grouping-under-the-us-sentencing-guidelines.html