Mistretta v. United States (488 U.S. 361)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided January 18, 1989 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 488 U.S. 361 · 109 S. Ct. 647
- Decided
- January 18, 1989
- Term
- October Term 1988
- Vote
- 8–1
- Majority author
- Justice Blackmun
- Issue area
- Miscellaneous
- Disposition
- Affirmed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Unspecifiable
Opinion excerpt
Justice Blackmun delivered the opinion of the Court. In this litigation, we granted certiorari before judgment in the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in order to consider the constitutionality of the Sentencing Guidelines promulgated by the United States Sentencing Commission. The Commission is a body created under the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 (Act), as amended, 18 U. S. C. § 3551 et seq. (1982 ed., Supp. IV), and 28 U. S. C. §§ 991-998 (1982 ed., Supp. IV). The United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri ruled that the Guidelines were constitutional. United States v. Johnson, 682 F. Supp. 1033 (1988). I A Background For almost a century, the Federal Government employed in criminal cases a system of indeterminate sentencing. Statutes specified the penalties for crimes but nearly always gave the sentencing judge wide discretion to decide whether the offender should be incarcerated and for how long, whether restraint, such as probation, should be imposed instead of imprisonment or fine. This indeterminate-sentencing system was supplemented by the utilization of parole, by which an offender was returned to society under the “guidance and control” of a parole officer. See Zerbst v. Kidwell, 304 U. S. 359, 363 (1938). Both indeterminate sentencing and parole were based on concepts of the offender’s possible, indeed probable,…
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