Study: Federal sentences still vary widely

WASHINGTON -- A new study shows that 30 years after Congress tried to create fairer results, federal judges are handing out widely disparate sentences for similar crimes, and the differences don't line up with the party of the president who appointed the judges, despite any impressions that Republicans or Democrats may be tougher or softer on crime.

Sentencing data from the past five years, analyzed for The Associated Press by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, show that sentences for the same types of crimes vary significantly between judges, even in the same courthouse.

The analysis showed the judges who meted out the harshest average sentences after trials for three of the most common types of crime -- drugs, weapons and white-collar charges -- were split evenly between the two parties, based on which president appointed them.

In the 10 court districts with the most drug case sentences after trial, Republican-appointed judges assigned stiffer average sentences in five, but Democratic appointees gave longer penalties in the other five.

Spurred by wide variations in sentences, Congress tried in 1984 to create more uniform outcomes with the Sentencing Reform Act. The law set up a commission that wrote guidelines for judges to follow as they punished convicts, with similar sentences for offenders with comparable criminal histories.

But the law's requirement that judges stick to these sentencing guidelines was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2005. Judges still must calculate the guidelines, with numerical values for factors such as the seriousness of the offense and the defendant's criminal record.

But judges have complete discretion on how much time each convicted defendant should receive -- or if they should be imprisoned at all -- subject to appellate review.

TRAC, a research center at Syracuse University, planned to launch Monday the first publicly available database of sentencing records, sortable by judge, after a 15-year struggle to get records from a reluctant Justice Department.

The database, available to anyone who pays $65 a month for a TRAC subscription, could be useful to researchers or attorneys trying to gauge the odds their clients face with a particular judge.