Additional Sentencing Considerations
Sentencing is like so many other areas of criminal law: complex. Here's a variety of information, including ways defendants can help and hurt their prospects.
Judges often have discretion to decide whether to give defendants who are convicted of separate crimes concurrent or consecutive sentences. (See Oregon v. Ice, U.S. Sup. Ct.
In many states, judges may factor dismissed charges into sentences.
Congress passed The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 in response to concerns that federal judges' sentences tended to be too lenient and vary too much from one locale to another.
A defendant could be convicted and sentenced for multiple crimes. Within the bounds of the law, a judge can order a defendant to serve them at the same time or one after the other.
It seems nonsensical: Why sentence a defendant to more than one “life” sentence? Life is, after all, life.
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