ALLOWING FOR LEEWAY

The Supreme Court's complex ruling on federal sentencing guidelines boils
down to this: Federal judges will have more leeway to fit punishment to
individual cases than was permitted during the 20 years that the guidelines
imposed mandatory maximums and minimums.

That is because the court, in two separate majority opinions encompassing
different groups of justices, said that the guidelines violate the
Constitution's Sixth Amendment but that the problem could be corrected by
having judges consult the sentence ranges rather than be rigidly bound by them.

Two great ironies are evident in the decision.

First, greater discretion for judges is the result of the finding that the
sentencing guidelines did not properly protect a criminal defendant's right
to a jury trial.

Second, by allowing judges to rely more on their own judgment, the court
might have invited the wrath of lawmakers who already want to clamp down on
federal judges.

No doubt federal sentencing will be in confusion as courts work their way
through the ruling to understand their obligations and as they sort through
the likely wave of appeals to determine which defendants are entitled to
new hearings.

The Justice Department's alarmist warning about the risk of returning to
"wildly inconsistent" sentences sounds overblown, given that the guidelines
weren't completely tossed out.

Judges still will have to consult the guidelines before imposing sentence.
And an appellate court still will be able to strike down a sentence that
goes unreasonably outside the recommended range, either too high or too low.

The greatest danger seems to lie in Congress' reacting without rationally
assessing the best way (if any) to restructure the federal sentencing scheme.

As Justice Stephen Breyer noted in his opinion, "The ball now lies in
Congress' court. The National Legislature is equipped to devise and
install, long-term, the sentencing system, compatible with the
Constitution, that Congress judges best for the federal system of justice."

But that system should be the result of careful, thoughtful evaluation --
and not a vengeful attempt to wrest power from an independent federal
judiciary.