Senior writer at Slate covering courts and the law. Co-host of the Amicus podcast. Dad.
Mark Joseph Stern
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SCOTUS tosses out a 4th Circuit decision allowing compassionate release under the First Step Act when there are arbitrary sentencing disparities between a defendant and his co-conspirators. Orders reconsideration in light of Rutherford. KBJ and Sotomayor dissent.
www.supremecourt.gov/orders/court...
The first grand jury proceeding in the Broadview Six case began with a *textbook example* of forbidden prosecutorial vouching. Misconduct from the start. Just incredible stuff.
This is the same Trump judge who said Trump has unreviewable authority to send the National Guard into American cities
Mark Joseph Stern
Mark Joseph Stern
Mike Sacks
Here's the part where the prosecutors identify the grand jurors who won't vote to indict, then dismiss them one by one so they can secure an indictment from those who remain (you need a minimum of 16) www.documentcloud.org/documents/28...
www.idahostatejournal.com/news/crimes_...
You can't read too much into a GVR (grant, vacate, remand). But if you combine this decision with Rutherford, it sounds like the conservative supermajority is shrinking the First Step Act's expansion of compassionate release to exclude consideration of wildly unfair, overlong, irrational sentences.
This decision is alarming because Rutherford dealt with defendants who were sentencing BEFORE the First Step Act and would've received less prison time had they been sentenced AFTER it.
Now the majority implies that compassionate release may never been available because of ANY sentencing disparity?
