United States Attorney General Merrick Garland issued new Department of Justice guidance for charging, plea, and sentencing policies via two memos: one providing general policies for all criminal cases and a second providing additional policies for drug cases. These latest DOJ policies are generally consistent in many respects with past policies issued by Attorney General Garland’s predecessors, but they break new ground (or revive previously rescinded policies) in several areas: mandatory minimum statutes, statutory sentencing enhancements, the crack/cocaine sentencing disparity, and pretrial diversion. All of these new policies tack in the same direction: ameliorating the harshness of the modern-era federal sentencing regime. Most notably, Attorney General Garland’s Drug Memo seeks to all but do away with the disparity by calling for federal prosecutors to “promote the equivalent treatment of crack and powder cocaine offenses.” The Drug Memo directs prosecutors to charge crack offenses as if they were cocaine offenses by using the quantity for cocaine rather than crack.
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
February 2023
Research Article|
February 01 2023
More Justice from Justice: The DOJ’s Latest Charging, Plea, and Sentencing Policies
Alan Vinegrad,
Alan Vinegrad
Covington & Burling LLP, former United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York
Search for other works by this author on:
Douglas A. Berman
Douglas A. Berman
Newton D. Baker-Baker & Hostetler Chair in Law, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law
Search for other works by this author on:
Federal Sentencing Reporter (2023) 35 (3): 153–156.
Citation
Alan Vinegrad, Douglas A. Berman; More Justice from Justice: The DOJ’s Latest Charging, Plea, and Sentencing Policies. Federal Sentencing Reporter 1 February 2023; 35 (3): 153–156. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fsr.2023.35.3.153
Download citation file:
Sign in
Don't already have an account? Register
Client Account
You could not be signed in. Please check your email address / username and password and try again.
Could not validate captcha. Please try again.