Deciphering a Rosetta Stone of Sentencing Reform

Abstract

There is so much that can and should be said about the so-called Feeney Amendment, it is hard to know where to start. Former U.S. Attorney Alan VinegradOs discussion of the Feeney Amendment in this Issue appropriately begins by observing that the Amendment contains Othe most farreaching changes to the federal sentencing laws since the creation of the Sentencing Guidelines.O Moreover, the process through which the Feeney Amendment was introduced and ultimately enacted, as well as the roles played by various individuals and institutions in this process, was as dramatic and noteworthy as is the AmendmentOs substantive changes to federal sentencing law. Indeed, the Feeney Amendment might be described metaphorically as a Rosetta Stone of sentencing reform: its substantive terms have so many features and so many insights can be drawn from its development and passage. Like the famed stone of Rosetta which helped scholars better understand the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Feeney Amendment could help scholars better understand the dynamics of modern sentencing reform. Yet, because the Feeney Amendment has been awash in controversy, its introduction and enactment might readily produce more acrimony and confusion than perspective and wisdom. Consequently, with the hope of aiding understanding of an epochal development in federal sentencing reform, the Federal Sentencing Reporter is dedicating this Issue and a number of subsequent issues to the story of the Feeney Amendment. This first Issue is devoted principally to providing a basic documentary history of the development and passage of the Feeney Amendment: in the pages that follow we reprint an array of materials detailing the roots from which the Feeney Amendment grew and also reactions the Amendment has generated. (These materials are necessarily abridged because a truly exhaustive account of Feeney Amendment roots and reactions could fill an entire FSR volume.) Subsequent issues and articles in Volume 16 of FSR will provide in-depth analytic commentary on the meaning, import and impact of the Feeney Amendment, while also tracking how the Amendment gets implemented by the Sentencing Commission, the Department of Justice and the federal judiciary.