United States v. Michael Herrold

PATRICK E. HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judge:

Three decades ago, Congress set the courts upon a new course for the sentencing of federal defendants, moving away from a long-in-place system that gave wide discretion to federal judges to impose sentences from nigh no prison time to effective life sentences.

But this discretion was not so wide in practice as in appearance-the judge's sentence gave way when the prisoner left the court for prison. The total time served by the prisoner was on his arrival determined in the main by a parole commission. The commission determined release dates, and in a rough…