Search Results for: mandatory minimum sentencing

The UK Prime Minister announced on Saturday that judges will be required under planned legislation to impose mandatory “whole life orders,” which prevent prisoners sentenced to life in prison from receiving parole, on people convicted of the “most horrific types of murder.” This means they will die in prison. In his statement, Prime Minister Rishi [...]

The US Supreme Court Monday issued an order list announcing it will hear two additional cases this term. The two cases are Pulsifer v. United States and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial Services Association of America, Limited. In the first case, petitioners ask the justices to consider the meaning of the First Step Act [...]

The American Bar Association’s (ABA) Plea Bargain Task Force Wednesday released its 2023 report, which found that 98 percent of criminal proceedings end in a plea bargain instead of a jury trial. According to the report, the emphasis on resolving criminal proceedings through plea bargains negatively impacts the integrity of the process by creating “perverse [...]

The Supreme Court of Canada Friday published two opinions which respectively struck down the mandatory minimum sentence for discharging a firearm into a house and upheld the two mandatory minimums for armed robbery with a firearm. The court handed down both decisions simultaneously. In R v. Hills the court considered whether the four-year mandatory minimum [...]

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced Thursday ten new measures aimed at reducing youth crime that would be introduced in 2023. Several of these measures relate to motor vehicle offences, while funding will be provided to “fast-track sentencing programs” in an effort to ensure youth offenders are in custody for a longer period of time to [...]

Sri Lankan law students have been reporting for JURIST on the situation in that country since mass protests and the physical invasion of the President’s House in Colombo by demonstrators forced the departure and resignation of Sri Lanka’s sitting president in July and precipitated the imposition of emergency rule. Now that the state of emergency [...]

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) Thursday announced that former Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernández would appear before a New York federal court after being extradited to the US to face charges of drug trafficking and money laundering. From about 2004 to 2022, Hernández allegedly participated in a corrupt and violent drug-trafficking conspiracy to facilitate [...]

A fractured US Supreme Court ruled Monday in Wooden v. United States that a man who broke into 10 separate storage units committed only one crime for sentencing enhancement purposes under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA). James Wooden broke into a mini-storage facility in 1997 and burglarized 10 different storage units, for which he [...]

Colorado Governor Jared Polis on Thursday reduced by a century the sentence of 26-year-old truck driver Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, whose brakes failed, resulting in four deaths. Originally sentenced to 110 years for an offense with no criminal intent, public outcry against Aguilera-Mederos’ harsh treatment prompted the governor’s and the district attorney’s offices to reconsider the sentence. [...]

A grand jury in the US District Court for the District of New Jersey Wednesday convicted three El Salvadoran nationals on various Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) charges, including murder in aid of racketeering. The three mens’ crimes stem from their participation in Mara Salvatrucha, a violent international criminal racketeering enterprise commonly known [...]