Precedent-Setting Court Cases Support Response. •WHAT Factors

¶ … precedent-setting court cases support response. •What factors affect sentencing? Describe sides debate sentencing guidelines. Evaluate factors affect sentencing compare factors racial, gender, socioeconomic lines. It is a rather well-known fact that there have been numerous cases in the history of the judicial system in which sentencing was considered to be unfair and dependent of racial, gender, or social factors. The role of the Sentencing guidelines was precisely to avoid arbitrary sentencing. However, there are strong debates concerning the applicability of these guidelines and abuses that surround them.

In general terms, the two elements that affect and determine sentencing are the level of the offence and the criminal history of the defendant (United States Sentencing Commission, 2012) These two elements interact and according to the Sentencing table determine the months to be spent in jail to serve a legal punishment. However, as legal practice improved and more and more cases of abuses surfaced, the Sentencing Guidelines were viewed as denying a defendant the right to a trial by a jury.

In this sense, "In a two-part decision on January 12, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the current federal sentencing system violates a defendant's right to trial by jury, while at the same time directing federal judges to "take [federal guidelines] into account" when imposing sentences.

Under the ruling, federal judges will have the discretion to decide whether to impose a sentence either harsher or more lenient than the guidelines' ranges, but may be subject to reversal if an appeals court determines the sentence to be "unreasonable." (The Leadership Conference, 2005) Therefore, the approval that the Guidelines could be set aside in a judge's decision over a sentencing would somewhat make the Guidelines to have mere informatory purposes.

In addition, if the sentencing can be done at the federal level, it automatically implies that the rules of one state can either benefit or harm a defendant, depending on the state under which he or she is trialed and sentenced. From this point-of-view, the place of the trial is in this sense extremely important to consider the place of the trial. This is also due to the fact that certain states view more favorably specific offenses or criminal conduct.

The arbitrary conduct of judges in relation to the Sentencing Guidelines has led to severe discriminatory sentencing which takes into account racial, gender, or social conditions. These are visible in several case logs in recent decades. Examples of racial discrimination in relation to the applicability of the Sentencing guidelines waiver and superseding of federal law are seen in cases in which the same judge gives different sentencing for similar offenses and conditions.

"Judge Johnson sentences a Hispanic offender convicted of armed robbery to 5 years in prison; she sentences a similarly situated white offender convicted of an identical crime to 2 years in prison" (How do Judges decide, n.d) At the same time though, in the defense of the judge, it can be argued that no condition is ever the same and that the criminal record of an accused weights heavily on the decision of the judge.

Such an approach however is strictly related to the fact that the reference points -- gravity of the offense and criminal history -- cannot be fully quantified and measured and so, sensitive distinctions between cases cannot be made. In terms of social discrimination, studies have shown that "despite the existence of statewide sentencing guidelines, the sentences imposed by judges in the three counties varied.

The sentences handed down by judges in a large urban county were the least severe, those handed down by judges in a medium-sized suburban county were the most severe, and those handed down by judges in a small rural county fell in between" (How do Judges decide, n.d) This further points out that despite.