That’s how sentencing in the military was until very recently. In our world, we had “unitary sentencing,” where you added up the maximum possible sentence for each offense, and the military judge or jury handed down a sentence somewhere in that range. It was a major factor in whether to ask for a bench trial - the conventional wisdom was that judges, who’ve seen everything, are a little more lenient on sentencing, but they’re more likely to convict (whether that’s actually true or not - who knows?).Tiredretiredlawyer wrote: ↑Wed Jul 19, 2023 8:49 am
Ah, but you didn’t practice law pre-guidelines. Those days were akin to being the great Carnac and guessing the judge’s thoughts based upon his/her previous sentencings. Or, for your consideration, like the U.S. Supreme Court making rulings based upon the Founding Fathers’ “intent”.
Anyhoo, the UCMJ was amended recently to require the sentencing in all cases except capital cases be conducted by a judge. The new law requires the judge to state the sentence for each offense.
And they required the military to set up a board to establish sentencing parameters (similar but not identical to the sentencing guidelines) that the judge must follow, or explain why he deviated.
And I’m like - this is it - I’m out. This is going to be way too much work to learn all this stuff. My eyes glaze over when I read about all this federal sentencing guidelines stuff.
