United States v. Poland

I join the result, but write separately to express my views on our current sentencing regime as it affected this case.

As set forth below, all of the parties, including the district court, agreed that the sentencing disparity between Poland’s sentence and his cousin’s juvenile sentence supported a sentencing reduction to lessen that disparity. The plain text of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 35(b), after amendments made to it in 2002 and 2007, permitted such a reduction. The parties and the district court, however, got caught up in the minutiae of whether those amendments, the latter…