Revista Volumen V - Academia Puertorriqueña de Jurisprudencia y ...

REFORMING THE FEDERAL SENTENCING GUIDELINES:APPELLATE REVIEW OF DISCRETIONARY SENTENCING DECISIONS *Hon. José A. Cabranes **With the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, 1 Congress enacted what may be the mostimportant single change in federal judicial procedure, since the promulgation of the FederalRules of Civil Procedure in 1938. In reforms that would have been of great significance even bythemselves, the Act eliminated the institution of parole from federal jurisprudence, and madesentencing decisions appealable, as they had not been since a brief period in the late nineteenthcentury. Most significantly, however, the 1984 Act set up an administrative agency, the UnitedStates Sentencing Commission, to establish mandatory rules to guide federal judges in theexercise of their sentencing authority. This sweeping reform and bureaucratization of thesentencing system reflected the popular belief -based on studies of dubious methodologicalsoundness- that discretion in sentencing led to vast, arbitrary disparities among judges’ sentencingdecisions.ISince the early years of this century, federal sentencing policy had emphasized therehabilitation of offenders. To this end, legislation had deliberately permitted sentencing to remainsomewhat unpredictable and discretionary: trial judges had leeway to be severe or lenientand the United States Parole Commission could greatly reduce sentences for good behavior andpresumptive rehabilitation. Claiming to see in all this discretion the rampant abuse of judicialpower, the reformers replaced the judgment of judges in individual cases with the judgment ofbureaucrats with mandatory blanket rules -euphemistically known as guidelines.Reformers were particularly concerned that the previous system gave free reign to the racial,ethnic, and class-based prejudices of judges, permitting them to impose more severe sentenceson nonwhites and on members of other disadvantaged groups. The American Civil LibertiesUnion, for example, advocated strict legislation prohibiting judges from considering education,vocational skills, and employment record and family or community ties in sentencing. 2 Inkeeping with this important goal, the Sentencing Commission was required to ensure that itsGuidelines were “entirely neutral as to the race, sex, national origin, creed, and socio-economicstatus of offenders.” 3 This requirement reflected a central aspiration of the Guidelines: imposingstrict limits on what was described as the terrifying and almost wholly unchecked discretionary*These remarks were prepared for the ceremony at which Chief Judge Cabranes was inducted as a member of the AcademiaPuertorriqueña de Jurisprudencia y Legislación in the School of Law of the University of Puerto Rico, on October 27, 1993.** Chief Judge, United States District Court for the District of Connecticut. A.B. Columbia College (1961); J.D., Yale LawSchool (1965); M. Litt (International Law) (1967). President Carter appointed Judge Cabranes to the federal bench in 1979, onthe recommendation of Senator Abraham A. Ribicoff. He is a former General Counsel of Yale University, of which he has been atrustee since 1987. He served in the mi-1970s as Special Counsel to the Governor of Puerto Rico and head of the Commonwealth’sWashington office. His writings of Puerto Rico’s constitutional development include a legislative history of the UnitedStates citizenship of the Puerto Rican people, Citizenship and the American Empire.128 U. S. C. §991 et seq.2Reform of the Federal Criminal Laws: Hearings on S.1 Before the Subcomm. On Criminal Laws and Procedure of the SenateComm. On the Judiciary, 94 th Cong., 1 st Sess. 190-210, 7942-90 (1975) (statements of Melvin L. Wolf, Legal Director, and MaryE. Gale of the ACLU). See, generally, Joseph C. Howard, Racial Discrimination in Sentencing, 59 JUDICATURE 121 (1975-76).328 U.S.C. § 994 (d).