U.S. v. Booker: The Left Wing Gives
and the Right Wing Takes Away

by David Zuckerman


As federal prisoners are well aware, the facts found by a jury often bear little relation to the facts relied on at sentencing. Under the federal Guidelines, the sentencing judge determines a wide variety ...

by Suzanne Lee Elliott and David B. Zuckerman

For at least 36 years, Washington has permitted defendants to be convicted of felony murder in the second degree when the underlying felony is assault. Prisoners rightly complained that this led to absurd and unfair results. Every homicide involves an assault. Why ...

June was a good month for many death row prisoners. In Ring v. Arizona , 122 S.Ct. 2428 (2002) and Atkins v. Virginia , 122 S.Ct. 2242 (2002), the Supreme Court placed new and significant limitations on the death penalty. These decisions could affect hundreds of prisoners.

In Atkins , ...

[Editor's note: A future issue of PLN will report on the other aspects of the Counter-Terrorism bill.]

Every election year, politicians compete to be "tougher on crime" than their opponents. In the last couple of decades, federal habeas corpus has generally been spared from this battle only because judges kept ...