EXPERTS PONDER IMPACT OF COURT'S SENTENCING RULING

Wednesday's Supreme Court decision on sentencing guidelines will give
federal judges significantly greater power in deciding how long criminals
will be imprisoned, an ironic result for a legal dispute that began as an
attack on judicial power.

The big question now, legal scholars and practitioners said, is how judges
will use the discretion they have been given. Since the federal sentencing
guidelines were adopted in 1984 to provide more uniformity in sentencing
nationwide, many judges have complained that rules place rigid constraints
on their ability to make refined decisions about punishment. At least one
Los Angeles federal judge, Dickran Tevrizian, who was appointed by Ronald
Reagan, applauded the development. "We're back to square one," Tevrizian
said. The ruling gives judges discretion to sentence the individual and not
just the crime, he said.

Still, most legal observers said the long-term consequences are hard to
predict.

"The bottom line is uncertainty," said Harvard Law School professor William
Stuntz. "Nobody knows what the sentencing landscape will look like two
years down the road. That depends on how federal judges react to the
decision, and how Congress reacts to the judges actions," he said.

Nonetheless, Stuntz and other law professors expect most judges would move
cautiously before making dramatic departures from the guidelines -- even
though Wednesday's ruling means that they are no longer bound by them.

"We have a generation of judges who have been raised on the guidelines,"
said Loyola law professor Laurie Levenson. "Even though they are no longer
required to follow them, the guidelines are what they know, and they are
likely to impact sentences."

Stanford University law professor Robert Weisberg agreed. "In the short
term, judges will at least act like they are obliged to take the guidelines
very seriously. ... I don't think the judges will go widely out of line,"
from where the guidelines would normally take them.

Wednesday's rulings offered something to both prosecutors and defense lawyers.

Cardozo University law professor Barry Scheck, who also is president of the
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, praised the ruling.

"For 20 years, courts have been forced to impose unjust, irrational
sentences based on unproven allegations, speculative calculations, and the
worst kinds of hearsay," Scheck said. "Congress should welcome this
opportunity to create a fair and just federal sentencing system, not a
quick fix."

Assistant Attorney General Christopher A. Wray said the Justice Department
was disappointed that "the decision made the guidelines advisory in nature."

But Wray said the guidelines "remain a critical part of the process to
achieve justice. District courts are still required to consult the
guidelines, and any sentence may be appealed by either defense counsel or
prosecutors on the grounds that it is unreasonable."

Inconsistencies in sentencing likely will increase, said Ohio State
University law professor Douglas Berman.

Defendants "with particularly sympathetic personal circumstances," such as
an elderly defendant who has been supporting a family, potentially will
benefit, Berman said.

Maria Stratton, the chief federal public defender in Los Angeles, concurred.

"We represent a lot of defendants who have had childhood abuse, mental
illness, troubled family situations. Under the guidelines, that stuff
couldn't be considered. Now it can," Stratton said.

While also welcoming the decision, U.S. District Court Judge David O.
Carter, who is based in Santa Ana, Calif., expressed concern that the
ruling might trigger many more appeals.

"Uniformity under the sentencing guidelines was a shield for defendants who
deserved harsher sentences and a sword that struck down rehabilitation for
those who deserved leniency," Carter said. "This decision lets the judge
sentence fairly. Experience shows that uniformity was a bad proxy for justice."

Since last summer, federal courts have been unsettled as the Supreme Court
considered the case. Many had feared the court would void the sentencing
guidelines entirely.

"Between blowing up the system and introducing a measure of flexibility,
wisdom surely counsels for the latter," said Stuntz, who applauded the
decision.

The scholars also noted the irony of the outcome -- a point also emphasized
by Justice Antonin Scalia in his dissent.

He called the court's new approach "wonderfully ironic. In order to rescue
from nullification a statutory scheme designed to eliminate discretionary
sentencing (by judges), it discards the provisions that eliminate
discretionary sentencing."