Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer, in a recent speech to the American Lawyer/National Law Journal Summit spoke about what he considers disparities in sentencing. He stated:

"One area – though by no means the only one – in which we have seen significant disparities in sentencing in the last several years is financial fraud.    With increasing frequency, federal judges have been sentencing fraud offenders – especially offenders involved in high-loss fraud cases – inconsistently.   For example, a defendant in one district may be sentenced to one or two years in prison for causing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, while a defendant in another district is sentenced to ten or 20 years in prison for causing much smaller losses."

Of course there are differences. Sentences should not be based solely on the crime or amount of loss involved.And yes, there are disaparities – there are disparities in the charging practices of prosecutors.  Lest us forget – we sentence people, not numbers, and people are different.

See also Mike Scarcella, BLT Blog, DOJ's Lanny Breuer Addresses Sentencing Disparities 

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